Care One at New Milford

To pair with its favorable overall performance, we awarded this facility an A for our inspections rating. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies 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.

This facility is also strong in the area of short-term care, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most facilities in this area. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we look at a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This rating is frequently a meaningful measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation. We were not able to locate information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 5.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

This nursing home also was given a favorable long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it an above average score of B+ in this category. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly can be a deadly illness for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next area we analyzed was nursing, which is this nursing home's worst category. We gave this nursing home a D in that category. Nevertheless, we wouldn't assess this facility based only on this area, since it received a few impressive scores in other areas. There are several data points included in this category. Many of these subcategories relate to the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home averaged only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Unfortunately, this place also did not fare as well as we had hoped in some of the quality measures we assessed for this category.