Newton Health Care Center

Newton Health Care Center is located in Newton, Iowa. The city has 20,417 people. With an overall grade of C, this is likely a middle of the road nursing home. Based on our assessment, there are certainly much worse places out there. One of the major highlights of this facility's report card is its remarkable inspection reports, which is addressed in the next section.

While this facility's overall grade was not bad, it really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A+ for that category, which is one of our best scores. Our inspection scores weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. This nursing home was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to create an imminent risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

Another one of this facility's better category scores came in the area of long-term care. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a B. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is higher than the majority of nursing homes. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Sadly, this facility's third highest category was short-term care. Nevertheless, with a grade of D in this category, it still fared somewhat poorly. In the category of short-term care, we try to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We look at a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The last measure we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 45.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor statistics sunk this nursing home's short-term care score.

This facility's weakest category was nursing, which is the final area we assessed. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F in this area. In spite of a few respectable scores in other areas, this score is nevertheless alarming so we would like to to draw your attention to it. Nursing scores are based largely on nurse staffing levels. This facility provided just 2.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. In addition to receiving below average scores for total nursing hours, this facility was a bit less impressive in some of the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents suffering pressure ulcers and found this facility was at approximately 1.5 times the national average in this statistic. This is a bad sign when you consider that so many bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, this statistic really dragged down this nursing home's nursing score substantially.