St Joseph Rehab & Nursing Care Center

On top of receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home excelled in our shot-term care category. In fact, we gave it an A for that category. Our short-term care grade is typically used to measure a nursing home's rehabilitation services. To have highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must offer higher levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 6.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this nursing home an A. Our nursing score analyzes the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Massachusetts in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving a resident more often.

In addition, this facility also earned a nearly flawless government inspection report. As a result, it earned one of our best grades in that category with an A-. Our inspection ratings are based on many pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this area typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This facility was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of these deficiencies to create an immediate risk to resident health or safety. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

The final category we analyzed was this facility's worst area. However, even its weakest link would likely be a highlight for many facilities. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B for long-term care. For prospective patients seeking a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is a very important category. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 73.641304 percent of its residents, which is a bit lower than we were hoping for. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, at least this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.