Heartland Country Village

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it received an excellent inspection score. In fact, its inspection grade was far superior to its overall grade. In the inspections category, we gave this facility an A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

This facility's second best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of B-. Nursing grades are largely based on a facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Lastly, our nursing ratings also consider quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this facility performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses to assist its patients.

This nursing home's next highest area came in the area of long-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. In our long-term care assessment, we look at the quantity of services offered by a facility, along with a series of quality measures. One of the datapoints we considered after nurse's aid hours is vaccinations. Fortunately, this facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The last area we analyzed is short-term care. This nursing home was given a grade of C for this area. In crafting our short-term care grades, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.