Harborview Health Systems Thomaston

While we gave this place a poor overall grade, we gave it a B+ for our inspections category. This was the result of the facility receiving a quality inspection report this year. Our inspection grades weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. You generally want to avoid places with too many severe deficiencies flagged. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

We were also pleasantly surprised to learn that this nursing home received a reasonably solid short-term care rating in our assessment. We gave it a C in that area. Our short-term care grades are probably most critical for residents needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than a typical facility. The hope is that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well below the national average.

Among this nursing home's several poor grades was its F in the area of nursing care. Our nursing grade is mostly associated with the facility's level of nurse staffing. This place provided a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing ratings. This facility fared well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

Turning to the next category, this nursing home really did not fare well here either. Due to a very poor grade of F in long-term care, this is really as bad as it gets. For prospective patients seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is a very important category. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Thankfully, this nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an above average total. To our surprise, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than most nursing homes. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.