New Harmony Care Center

On top of earning a great overall grade, this nursing home really excelled in nursing, where it received an A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. In computing a nursing home's nursing score, we consider the amount of time nurses commit to patients as well as the level of skill of those nurses. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures 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 Minnesota in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning residents more often.

We also wanted to emphasize this facility's nearly flawless inspections in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of B+ in this area. Inspection grades account for 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. Facilities with better scores in this area usually have very few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

This facility was given its next most favorable category grade in the category of short-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of B- in this category, which is an acceptable grade. Our short-term care grade is often employed to score a facility's rehabilitation services To provide highly rated rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to offer better levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 3.6 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.

Turning to our final category, this facility received a C in long-term care, which is generally a decent grade. With our long-term care grade, we assess the quantity of services provided by a nursing home, along with a handful of qualitative metrics. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. Unfortunately, this nursing home vaccinated a relatively low 89.33333 percent of its residents for pneumonia. On a more positive note, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.