Heartland Care Center

This nursing home received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to emphasize its excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

We also gave this nursing home a decent score in the category of nursing care, with a grade of B-. Nursing grades are largely associated with a nursing home's nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Lastly, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this place actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is generally a good indicator that a facility has quality controls in place.

We also gave this nursing home a respectable score in the category of short-term care, where it received a C. Our short-term care ratings are arguably most important for residents in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The last measure we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 3.9 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.

The next area we assessed is long-term care. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D for our long-term care category, leaving this as the facility's worst area. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids, as well as the levels of routine medical care available. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated only 38.77551 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.