Harmony House Health Care Center

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home excelled in our inspections category, where it earned a grade of A+. Few nursing homes fared this well in this category. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This place received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to create an immediate threat to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. When computing our nursing grades, we look at both nursing hours and the training levels of the nurses. This facility provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning residents more frequently.

This facility also received an impressive long-term care score. In fact, we gave it an above average score of B in this category. Facilities that do well in this category tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. Once we concluded our assessment of the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 96.815285 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a life or death health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final category we assessed proved to be this facility's worst category. Nevertheless, even in its weakest link we still gave it a respectable grade of B- for our short-term care category. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to devise a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we considered in this area is the number of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.