Heartland Health Care Center Boynton Beach

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these are quite insignificant. This facility received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe. This means that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home truly excelled in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a score of A. Few nursing homes performed more favorably in this category. Facilities that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is much higher than most nursing homes. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. There are many subcategories within this grade. Most of the subcategories relate to the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Moving on to the last category, this facility was awarded a respectable short-term care grade. Even though this isn't as good as several of its other grades, this is really not a major area of concern. In the area of short-term care, we strive to qualify measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final datapoint we considered in this area is the percentage of patients that returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 3.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below average.