Bear Mountain at Andover

In addition to performing well overall, this facility also earned a nearly flawless inspection report. Consequently, it received one of our best grades in that area with an A+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some are relatively minor. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility was awarded a high-end score of A in our long-term care area. Facilities that receive this kind of score in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are well cared for. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 88.625595 percent of its patients. This is somewhat lower than we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable figure. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, at least this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.04 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility also received a fine short-term care score. In fact, this turned out to be this facility's third strongest category score. In that category, we awarded this facility a score of A-. Our short-term care grades are considered to be more meaningful for residents needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. This means not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

The last area we assessed was nursing, where this facility was awarded a grade of A-. This wrapped up a very favorable profile. Very few nursing homes earned an A- or better in each of our categories. Our nursing score looks at the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We consider both the levels of training of those nurses and the number of hours spent with residents. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these metrics as reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.