Mercy Harvard Hospital Care Center

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, this facility performed well in our inspections category, where it earned an A+. Very few nursing homes fared this well in this area. Inspection scores weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this category tend to have very few severe deficiencies. While this place had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another reason we assessed this nursing home so favorably is that it received an A+ short-term care grade. This is just about as elite as it gets in this area. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This score is more often than not a meaningful assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Our nursing rating includes many factors, but the paramount one is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home averages 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final area we rated is long-term care, where this facility was given a grade of A. This rounded out a first-rate report card. Very few facilities received an A- or higher in each of our categories. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. One of the data points we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This is a proven method to avoid negative health outcomes for the aged 65 and up population. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.