New Brighton Care Center

To go along with a great overall grade, we awarded this nursing home an A for our inspections rating. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area typically have very few of these severe deficiencies. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Our nursing score is primarily based on a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a system of moving residents more frequently.

Turning the page to our next category, we awarded this facility a grade of A for its long-term care grade. This is a very impressive rating. For long-term care residents, 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 patients. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 91.47287 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is slightly less than we expected but still a respectable figure. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The last area we scored is short-term care, where this nursing home was given a grade of A-. This completed a very strong profile. Few facilities received an A- or better in in each area we assessed. Short-term care scores are critical for prospective residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 4.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.