Harbert Hills Academy Nursing Home

To pair with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. One of the criteria we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccines. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a proven method to minimize unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the aged 65 and up population. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The next category we looked at was inspections, where this facility also received an A+ grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Our inspection grades account for several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this category typically have few severe deficiencies. This place received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. The nursing rating consists of several datapoints, most of which are based on nursing hours. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place 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 country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving a resident more often.

The final area we rated ended up being this nursing home's weakest category. Nevertheless, even in its weakest link we still awarded it a respectable grade of C for our short-term care category. Short-term care grades are generally used to judge a facility's rehabilitation services. To provide high-end rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must provide better levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other types of therapists. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this nursing home provided registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. The final item we looked at in this category is the number of patients who eventually returned home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.