Harts Harbor Health Care Center

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it earned an excellent inspection score. In fact, its inspection score was far better than its overall grade. In our inspections category, we gave it an A-. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some are relatively insignificant. While this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. A few minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

The next most favorable area we gave this facility in any area came in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a B-. Long-term care grades are important for individuals in need of personal care. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 99.002 percent of its residents, which is more than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. Nursing ratings are heavily correlated with quantity of nursing care available. This facility provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a somewhat uninspiring figure as it is well below the national average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place actually excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In fact, it performed well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.

The final area we analyzed was short-term care, is this nursing home's least impressive category. We awarded this nursing home a D in this category. Our short-term care scores are crucial for individuals requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a wide range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. With a grade in this range for this category, we were not stunned to learn that this nursing home was well below average in the two key staffing figures we focus on. The nursing home offered significantly fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most nursing homes. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.