Accura Healthcare of Newton West

This facility received a quality overall score as described above, but we especially would like to point out its nearly flawless health inspections in recent years. We gave them an A- in this area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some can be quite insignificant. This nursing home was assessed 7 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies an immediate threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. This proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility an A-. Our nursing rating is based on a variety of subcategories. The most important one is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed 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 the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning a patient more frequently.

This facility received a favorable short-term care grade as well. We awarded it one of our better scores in that area with a score of B+. Our short-term care ratings are important for people seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a broad range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The final category we assessed is long-term care, which turned out to be this facility's worst category. It received an F in this area, which is clearly somewhat disappointing. In a long-term care setting, the facility's primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 98.55073 percent of its residents, which is higher than the majority of nursing homes. To our surprise, this nursing home was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.