Care One at Newton

Care One at Newton is a very-large nursing home located in Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts. With an A overall grade, we ranked this facility in the top 25 percent of all nursing homes in the country. You really can not do any better than this nursing home. We also gave this facility strong scores in all of our categories. More information about these categories can be found below.

We also wanted to point out that this nursing home has received near flawless inspections recently. We awarded them an A+ in this area. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to point out the fact that this facility was given a high-end score of A in our short-term care category. In determining these short-term care ratings, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to devise a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. This place provides more services with registered nurses and physical therapists than most nursing homes we looked at. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it performed as well as just about any facility in Massachusetts in this area with 56.8 percent of its patients returning home.

We also would like to point out the fact that this facility was awarded a dominant grade of A- in our long-term care category. In a long-term care environment, the primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 90.95607 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is a few points less than we were hoping for but still a respectable percentage. Lastly, we looked at its number of hospitalizations. With 1.85 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this place was just about middle of the road in this area.

Turning to the final area, this facility was given an excellent nursing score. We awarded it a grade of B+ in this category, topping off one of our finer report cards. When computing our nursing scores, we factor in both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This place provides an impressive 3.4 hours of nursing care per patient each day. Of this total, more than one quarter of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which is one of the most skilled levels of nurses. We add more weight to hours provided by skilled nurses in determining our nursing ratings. Finally, we also assessed certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these areas as predictive indicators of the caliber of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.