Harborchase of Venice

With an address in Venice, Florida, Harborchase of Venice is one of six available nursing homes there. Sporting an overall score of C, this is likely a decent nursing home. We wanted to point out that Venice received a city grade of B, so you may wish to consider other options in the city as well. The best part of this place's report card was its exemplary inspection rating. Inspection grades are discussed in the next paragraph.

To pair with its relatively modest overall score, we gave this facility an A for its inspection grade. This grade is far better than the facility's overall grade. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this area generally have very few of these severe deficiencies. This facility was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to create an immediate risk to patient health or safety. A couple of minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

Another strength of this facility is its top-shelf score in short-term care. We awarded it one of our better scores in that category, with a score of A-. Our short-term care ratings are critical for people requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a broad range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. We were very impressed to discover that this facility provides its residents significantly more physical therapist hours than most other facilities. Finally, we looked at the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. On top of excelling in the area of physical therapy hours, we found that it fared as well as just about any facility in the country with 66.7 percent of its patients returning home. Most nursing homes are below 50 percent in this metric.

Unfortunately, this nursing home only earned a grade of D for its long-term care score, which is not a score to write home about. For residents seeking a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is a very important category. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is better than most nursing homes. To our surprise, this place also was not as bad as we expected at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Although it had 1.83 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, its risk adjusted statistic was not bad since it had some more complex patients.

The next area we graded is nursing, which is this facility's weakest category. It received a lowly F for this category, which is obviously concerning. There are quite a few factors included in this category. Many of these data points are tied to the quantity of nurse staffing. Quantity of nursing care does not appear to be the problem here. Based on the data, it looks like this place provides an above average 4.3 hours per resident on a daily basis. This is more nursing care than most facilities offer. Despite performing well in terms of nursing hours, this facility didn't fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in calculating our nursing scores. We looked at the percentage of patients experiencing major falls and pressure ulcers. This place was above the national average in both of these metrics. This may be a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores and falls are preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, these metrics dragged down this nursing home's nursing rating significantly.