Heritage Place of Decatur

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it earned a very impressive inspection report this year. As a result, it earned one of our highest grades in that area with an A. These inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to resident health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

As it turns out, this nursing home only received a D for its long-term care rating, which happens to be one of its more respectable category scores. For patients looking for a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care is an important category. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination data. We were optimistic to find that this nursing home vaccinated 99.25373 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Surprisingly, this nursing home also keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.

Tragically, this facility received an F for its short-term care score. In our short-term care category, we try to craft a sound gauge for rehabilitation services. In this process, we look at the nursing home's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents that were able to return home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

The last category we rated is nursing. This nursing home was given a very poor grade of F in this category. When calculating a nursing home's nursing rating, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses commit to residents and the level of skill of the nurses. This facility provided only 0.1 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing grades. This facility fared well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care.