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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also received an A+ short-term care grade, making it one of the few facilities to receive more than one A+ category scores. In the category of short-term care, we strive to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who returned home from this facility. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. The nursing rating is based on several subcategories. The most important factor is the amount of time nurses spend with patients. This nursing home provides 0.5 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 facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving a resident at least once a day.

In our last category, this nursing home was awarded another A+ for its long-term care grade, topping off a truly spectacular profile of straight A+'s in all of our categories. When facilities receive this kind of score in long-term care it is a good sign for patient care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a life threatening ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.