The 61 Lowest-Rated MA Nursing Homes In New Government Grading

Note: To see the 65 highest-rated (five-star) nursing homes in Massachusetts, click here.

The federal government has given 61 nursing homes in a Massachusetts a one-star rating after tweaking the way it assesses thousands of nursing homes nationwide. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services last month revised its inspection process and began providing improved staffing details and new quality metrics. The changes were aimed at providing more transparent and meaningful information about the quality of care that residents receive.

Below are the one-star nursing homes in Massachusetts as of April 24, according to the agency's Nursing Home Compare tool. The site provides detailed information about every Medicare-certified nursing home in America. Nursing homes with five stars are considered to have above-average quality while those with one star are considered to have below-average quality.

See the five-star nursing homes in Massachusetts here.

Check out the full list of nursing home grades here.

• Attleboro Healthcare
• Bedford Gardens Care and Rehabilitation Center, New Bedford
• Brandon Woods of New Bedford
• Brentwood Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center, Danvers
• Brighton House Rehabilitation & Nursing Center
• Care One at Northampton
• Care One at Redstone, East Longmeadow
• Center For Extended Care at Amherst
• Country Gardens Skilled Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, Swansea
• Crawford Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Fall River
• Dedham Healthcare
• Eliot Center for Health & Rehabilitation, Natick
• Fairhaven Healthcare Center, Lowell
• Fall River Healthcare
• Farren Care Center, Turner Falls
• Fitchburg Gardens for Nursing and Rehabilitation
• Franklin Health and Rehabilitation Center
• Garden Place Healthcare, Attleboro
• Governors Center, Westfield
• Heritage Hall South, Agawam
• Heritage Hall West, Agawam
• Highview of Northampton, Leeds
• Holy Trinity Eastern Orthodox N&R Center, Worcester
• Jesmond Nursing Home, Nahant
• Kathleen Daniel Nursing and Rehabilitation, Framingham
• Maplewood Rehab and Nursing, Amesbury
• Marlborough Hills Rehabilitation & Health Care Center
• Medford Rehabilitation and Nursing Center
• Medway Country Manor Skilled Nursing & Rehabilitation
• Melrose Healthcare
• Norwood Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center, Lowell
• Odd Fellows Home of Massachusetts, Worcester
• Oxford Rehabilitation & Health Care Center, Haverhill
• Parkway Health and Rehabilitation Center, Boston
• Parsons Hill Rehabilitation & Health Care Center, Worcester
• Penacook Place, Inc, Haverhill
• Plymouth Harborside Healthcare
• Plymouth Rehabilitation & Health Care Center
• Poet's Seat Health Care Center, Greenfield
• Quincy Health And Rehabilitation Center LLC
• Rehabilitation & Nursing Center At Everett
• Royal Meadow View Center, North Reading
• Royal Norwell Nursing & Rehabilitation Center LLC
• Royal Sandalwood Center, Oxford
• Royal Wood Mill Center, Lawrence
• Soldiers Home in Massachusetts, Chelsea
• St. Camillus Health Center, Whitinsville
• Stonehedge Health Care Center, West Roxbury
• Taunton Nursing Home
• Wakefield Center
• Wareham Helathcare
• Wedgemere Healthcare, Taunton
• West Newton Healthcare
• West Side House LTC Facility, Worcester
• Westborough Healthcare
• Wingate at Harwich
• Wingate at Needham
• Wingate at Springfield
• Wingate at Worcester
• Woodbriar Health Center, Wilmington
• Worcester Rehabilitation & Health Care Center

Notably, the agency is once again providing health inspection ratings, which were recently unfrozen. Now, every long-term care facility has had an opportunity to answer questions using the new survey process, according to CMS.

The threshold for staffing levels is also much more stringent now. Under the previous method, automatic one-star ratings (out of five) would be doled out to nursing homes that reported having no registered nurse on site for at least seven days in a quarter. That threshold has since been lowered to four days.

Nursing homes provide round-the-clock care to people who can't be cared for at home and staffing has the "greatest impact" on the quality of care, the federal agency said — more staff, better quality. The updates will hopefully improve quality industry-wide, the agency said, and give consumers more confidence in their decisions.

"CMS is committed to safeguarding the health and safety of nursing home residents by ensuring they are receiving the highest quality of care possible," agency Administrator Seema Verm said in a news release.

The changes appear to have had a wide-ranging effect. There are more than 15,000 Medicare and Medicaid-certified nursing homes in the country, and the CMS doled out one-star ratings to over 1,600 of them, according to Kaiser Health News. Most were reportedly downgraded because payroll records showed no registered nurse hours for at least four days. Other homes reportedly failed to submit payroll documents or couldn't be verified.

CMS is a federal agency in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It administers the Medicare program and works with state governments to administer Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and health insurance portability standards.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.