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 really excelled in the area of long-term care, where it received a grade of A. Few facilities performed more favorably in this area. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. Once we concluded our assessment of the volume of care provided by nurses, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a life threatening condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. This wasn't quite as good as some of its other scores, but a grade in this range is not the end of the world. We looked at the levels of nurses at the facility, as well as the number of hours the nurses spent with patients, in calculating our score in this area. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often a reliable indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place.

The final area we rated is short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a solid grade in that category, with a grade of C. Even though this is not as dominant as several of this facility's other scores, it is still not a poor grade. With our short-term care grade, we endeavor to create a meaningful gauge for rehabilitation. In doing so, we look at a facility's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.8 percent of this facility's residents returned home.