Latest on Healthcare in Massachusetts

Growing quickly and with determination, NextStep is a major player in the ever-changing landscape of healthcare in Massachusetts. There are few other skilled nursing home facility operators who are competing on there level, especially in areas south and southwest of Boston. Premier healthcare and Genesis healthcare, appear to be their two biggest competitors in the area. Both NextStep's CEO and CFO, founded the company back in 2007, according to their website . Coming from extensive careers in the field these two and their team definitely seem to know what they are doing and where they want the company to be in the future. They currently manage many homes including Wedgemere in Taunton, Wareham healthcare in Wareham, as well as many other facilities. Their reach in Massachusetts as a whole is quite extensive, from Cape Cod to the Berkshires to Fall River and many places in between. Currently, Next Step is taking a very aggressive "step" in trying to recruit worker...

   Recent announcements have been made that two more facilities in Fall River Massachusettes will be closing. This comes after a series of further closing so far this year with at least six in the surrounding Boston Area. Clark House nursing home in Westwood is one of the most recently noted. That facility is jointly owned by Mass General Hospital. Kindred Healthcare is the other part owner of this 70 bed facility and has been managing the property.    In Fall River, Adams House will soon be shut down. This small continuing care retirement home housed only 19 beds but did run as a nonprofit. While it is not a large healthcare facility by any means it was one more place that the aging community could turn to when staying home is not an option. Sometimes a small place like this feels more homely and intimate than a larger facility as well. They offered hospice care also.     Mental health and drug rehabilitation program by Corrigan is also on th...

   USA Today and the Boston Globe, have received proof that about half of all the countries The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), nursing homes are among the lowest ranked nursing homes. Coming in at 1 out of 5 stars the results are scary. This information is not normally made know to the public, leaving patients and their family members guessing if a particular VA nursing home will provide the needed care or not.      Two of the poorly rated VA nursing homes are located right here in Massachusetts. The one in Bedford and the other in Brockton. A rep for the VA; however, reported that the VA nursing homes are comparable to the private nursing homes. Also, VA nursing homes overall have had increasingly better ratings over the last year with only one nursing home becoming noticeably worse. The VA operates nursing homes in almost every state. Some states have only one nursing home while others have multiple VA nursing homes. There is also a VA nursing home i...

   Currently, Massachusetts nursing homes are being surveyed by the Department of Public Health on behalf of CMS. Dedham was one of the last to have the state in-house. At the time of this writing, they are also at a home in New Bedford on a follow-up with issues from their last survey. What does this mean? Why do the states do surveys? What is the result of the survey and how does it affect anything?      CMS stands for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Systems. This group performs a survey of nursing homes to see if they are meeting the necessary requirements to receive reimbursements from these programs. Basically, the survey is done to make sure that the nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities are abiding by safe and lawful practices compliant with the state rules to get paid. 42 CFR Part 483, Subpart B; this outlines the rules that these facilities have to follow to pass the survey. If the places do poor on these services they get a chance to correc...

         Fall River, a small mental health home is closing doors in as little as two weeks. After a deal made with Vinfen and another company fell through. Citing a lack of money coming in, the staff be looking for jobs elsewhere now, many still in mental health care. This made public not to long ago, is another in the string of facility closings plaguing Massachusetts health care system. While it does not yet seem to be that "the sky is falling," it is another troubling sign of the changes in healthcare. Already there is a shortage of beds for mentally unstable as well as in the addiction treatment centers. What this means long-term, maybe not too much but it will also affect one other facility on the Cape.               The Community Crisis Stabilization Unit is a non-locked mental health facility located in a nondescript building on a busy street in Fall River. It is a small facility with only a handful of beds but a much-...

1 . We usually always know which nursing homes and rehabs are good and which ones are not. However; just because we know though, does not mean we will always tell you.  We have are jobs on the line of we bad mouth places we service or our company has an interest in. We will usually only tell people we trust or if we are really connecting well with a patient prior to them going to a facility. Between the nursing staff we meet, the patients we take out of those facilities, the way they talk to and care for patients, we see a huge part of what goes on at care facilities. All of us know where we would and would not want someone we care about going if they needed time at a care facility. 2 . We know which hospital would be better for you in an emergency and it is not always the closest. A lot of people when they need an ambulance feel like they know which hospital that they want to go to. For most cases, the hospital that your care provider is affiliated or where you are having...

     STAT is often the name to any to any one of three ambulance companies in the SouthShore area. In truth; however, there is only one real STAT company. STAT was at one point just one ambulance company located in Dartmouth MA that was sold to a woman named Carol Mansfield in 1986. Since that time she has grown it into an expansive business portfolio encompassing the original STAT, then SouthCoast EMS and more recently the sister company New England Medical Institute. STAT is the founding company that is the sole contracted private 911 provider for the town of Dartmouth Massachusetts for over 30 years now. SouthCoast EMS is an offshoot to STAT. Some of the ambulances still read STAT SouthCoast, although a push to show the distinction between the two companies  and personal are underway in a rebranding      Therefore many healthcare providers in the community and service area may refer to SouthCoast EMS as STAT.  SouthCoast EMS handles the compan...

Nursing home closures are widespread in Massachusetts for 2018. Low census, poor reimbursement rates and general social changes into the desire and push for healthcare at home are a few of the reasons for the shutdowns. Kindred was one of the first to start shutting doors in the Boston area. Specifically, homes in Boston, Canton, Dedham, and Needham were the first announced closings. From there Heritage Nursing home in Lowell, and, the more boutique, privately owned Island Terrace in Lakeville. The trend has not stopped there though. Still, not even summer yet, and the Clark House Nursing home in Westwood has announced they will be closing doors. The challenges facing older established nursing homes are daunting. More possible closures have already been rumored including Life Care of Bridgewater. Others have yet to be seen. While one would think that this would help raise the census across the board for homes it really has not had a huge effect according to administrators at multiple...

Nurses at Bay State Franklin Medical Center scored a win today after a team effort pushing for change in the.way staff is treated and paid and patients receive care. The staff has been on and off again with strikes and hospital lockouts fighting for better working conditions and patient safety. Included in the long list of changes set forth in the new contract the nurses and union brokered with the hospital include such things as raises and new staffing requirements. Nurses have stated that the conditions at the hospital were deplorable. Working there was hell and the hospital admin had taken advantage of the staff and put patients at risk. Both parties; however, expressed their satisfaction over the new contract. Nurses are that they got about 90 to 95 percent of the new requirements being sought after.