Walpole Healthcare

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our nursing rating. Nursing grades are tied to quantity of nursing care available. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

On the list of its many elite grades, this facility received an excellent short-term care score. In fact, it received a grade of A in that area. In determining our short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to formulate a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.9 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

The third category we analyzed is long-term care. Adding to its elite profile, this facility also performed well in that area. In fact, we awarded it a of A- for that category. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 96.12903 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In addition, this nursing home also received a virtually flawless government inspection report. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with an A-. With this impressive grade, this place is one of the few facilities in Massachusetts to receive straight A's. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This place received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.