The New Homestead

To go along with its decent overall grade, we awarded this facility an A for its inspection grade. This is far more impressive than the facility's overall score. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection ratings. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively minor. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

We also wanted to point out that this nursing home earned an B+ in nursing. Nursing ratings are largely based on the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility's third most favorable category turned out to be short-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. In the category of short-term care, we strive to qualify measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 3.2 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The final area we analyzed was long-term care. We awarded this nursing home a D in our long-term care category, making this the nursing home's least impressive category grade. For long-term care residents, the primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. One of the statistics we considered on top of nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. Thankfully, this facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 98.40426 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this nursing home was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.