Newton Village Health Care Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this category tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. This place received 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to create an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

Another reason we graded this facility so highly is that it was awarded an A+ short-term care score. This is simply as elite as it gets in this area. Our short-term care grade is generally used to gauge a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To have good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must offer higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

This nursing home also received an A+ nursing grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+ category grades. Nursing ratings are mostly tied to the facility's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility 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 state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning residents even once per day.

In the last area, this facility also was awarded an impressive long-term care rating, with a grade of B+. This finished off a first-rate report card. When nursing homes receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is a good sign for resident care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. One of the factors we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccines. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 98.57143 percent of its patients. This is a great way to minimize unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the elderly population. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.