The Grove at Harmony

The Grove at Harmony is the only facility we were able to find in Harmony, Pennsylvania. We awarded it an overall grade of B-, which is a middle of the pack rating. Based on our assessment, this place has some redeeming qualities. One of the best aspects of this nursing home's report card is its remarkable inspection rating, which is addressed in the next paragraph.

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this facility outperformed its overall score in the category of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in this category with an A. Inspection scores are tied to items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this area have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This means the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In addition, we also wanted to note that this facility was given impressive long-term care marks in this assessment. We gave them one of our higher grades in this area, with a grade of B. This turned out to be the facility's second best grade. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 96.40884 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a life threatening ailment for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility doesn't take any chances. 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.

We also gave this nursing home a decent score in the category of nursing care, with a grade of C. Nursing scores are based in large part on quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home provides 3.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. While this nursing home didn't really impress in terms of the quantity of nursing care provided, it performed admirably in some of our quality measures. It was above average in two of the metrics we assess, with favorable scores for minimizing its patients' major falls and pressure ulcers. These statistics are good measures of the quality of nursing care available since many bed sores and falls can be avoided.

The last category we assessed is short-term care. We gave this nursing home a D in short-term care, leaving this as the facility's weakest area. In our short-term care rating, we endeavor to craft a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we analyze the nursing home's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The last statistic we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to return home from the facility. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area, with just 33.1 percent of its residents returning home. Unfortunately, this was well below the national average.