Heartland Country Village

The main reason this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an elite nursing grade. In fact, we gave this facility a grade of A-. The nursing rating features a number of subcategories. The most important one is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

We also gave this facility a positive score in short-term care. This facility earned a B in this category, which is one of our more favorable scores. With our short-term care rating, we try to create a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we analyze a nursing home's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This nursing home also received a decent inspection grade. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of C. Inspection grades account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its government inspection report, but fortunately none were in any of the categories labeled G through L. This means it avoided the more ominous categories of deficiencies. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.

The next category we rated was long-term care, was this facility's worst category. We gave this facility a D in this category. This really was one of the couple of weak points on an otherwise impressive report card. For residents seeking a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Surprisingly, this facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 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.