New Brighton Care Center

With more than 25 options located in Saint Paul, Minnesota, New Brighton Care Center is one of many options here. This facility was given an A- overall, which is an elite grade. Based on our analysis, this place is really as good as it gets. Scroll down to find this facility's category grades, which are also quite good. It's hard to find any major flaws in this nursing home's profile.

One of the many reasons this ended up being a quality nursing home is that it earned an A+ inspection grade. This is just about as good as it gets in this very important area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being quite minor. This facility was hit with 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies to create an imminent threat to resident health or safety. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. This turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. The nursing score weighs many subcategories, however, the primary consideration is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 3.9 hours of nursing care per patient per day. Roughly one quarter of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are among the most highly skilled nurses. Both of these statistics beat out the national average. Finally, this facility also excelled in several of the quality-based metrics we looked at. With less than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category.

Turning the page to our next category, this facility received a top-shelf short-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- in this category. In crafting these short-term care scores, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to create a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. One of this nursing home's strengths is registered nurse hours. We found that it offers more care from registered nurses to its residents than most facilities. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 44.7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

The last area we rated is long-term care, in which this facility was given a grade of B. Although this turned out to be its worst category rating, this is still a favorable rating. Facilities that excel in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 98.56115 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a life threatening illness for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.