Heartland Health Care Center-Canton

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this facility performed well in our nursing category. We awarded it an A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Our nursing rating considers a variety of factors. The most important one is the amount of time nurses spend with residents. This nursing home provides 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 place 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 often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home is also above average in the category of short-term care, where it was given a grade of B+. It outpaced most nursing homes in this area. Short-term care scores are vital for residents needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a vast scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the number of residents that returned home from the facility. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Moving on to another of this nursing home's strengths, it also earned a very impressive inspection rating. In fact, inspections proved to be one of its best grades. In that area, we awarded this facility an impressive grade of B+. Our inspection scores weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as 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. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

The next area we analyzed was long-term care, which was this facility's least impressive area. We gave this facility a D in that category. Sadly, this score hurt the nursing home's overall profile a bit. For prospective residents looking for a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. After considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. We were pleased to discover that this nursing home vaccinated 98.540146 percent of its patients against pneumonia. To our surprise, this place also keeps its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.