Harmar Place Rehab & Extended Care

One of the main reasons this turned out to be a strong nursing home is that it received a very impressive long-term care rating. In fact, this was its best grade. In that area, we awarded this nursing home an A. When facilities receive this type of grade in long-term care it is a good sign for resident care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia tragically can be a life or death illness for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In addition, this facility also performed well in inspections, which is based on the facility's recent inspections. In fact, we awarded it an B+ for that category, which is one of our best grades. Our inspection scores are based on items found on the a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was given a favorable short-term care grade. Indeed, we awarded it an above average score of B+ in this category. Short-term care ratings are critical for residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a wide spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents that who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The next category we analyzed was nursing. This facility received an above average nursing score this year, with a B-. Even though this is not quite as good as some of its other scores, this remains a decent grade in this area. Our nursing grade focuses on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We consider both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This facility averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is not an impressive total. Lastly, we like to look at quality-based metrics, such as the percentage of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. These data points are decent measures of the quality of nursing care.