Harding Pointe

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it received an excellent inspection score. In fact, its inspection score was far better than its overall grade. In the inspections category, we gave this facility an A+. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively minor. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

In addition, we awarded this facility a B in our long-term care category. This is one of our higher scores. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. This place also keeps its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 1.08 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a much better hospitalization rate than the majority of nursing homes.

Another strength of this facility is its favorable grade in nursing. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of D. We looked at the levels of nurses employed by the nursing home, as well as the number of hours those nurses were with patients, in calculating our score in this category. This facility offered a meager 2.9 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is well below average. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing scores. This place performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these metrics to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final category we scored is short-term care. We gave it an F in this category, which is a rock bottom grade. This is obviously a major concern. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to assess measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze a facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. With a score in this range in this area, we weren't stunned to discover that this place was well below average in multiple staffing areas we focus on. In fact, it supplied significantly fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other facilities. The final item we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 0 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, this was quite a bit below average.