Heartland of Kettering

Heartland of Kettering is in Dayton, Ohio, which is one of the most densely populated metropolitan areas in the country. We gave this nursing home an overall grade of B-. A score of this caliber requires some respectable marks. Based on our ratings, this facility has some redeeming qualities. This facility is better in some categories than others, but it did not have any bad scores in any of our major areas discussed below. More information about these categories can be found below.

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home really outperformed its overall score in the area of inspections. In fact, it received an excellent government inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our best grades in this category with a grade of A-. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

Another one of this nursing home's higher category scores came in the area of short-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. It actually outperformed most nursing homes in this area. In our short-term care assessment, we seek to create a valuable gauge for rehabilitation. In doing so, we analyze a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Remarkably, this nursing home provides its residents at least 1.5 times as many physical therapist hours per week than the typical nursing home. The final datapoint we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it fared as well as just about any facility in Ohio in this area with 59.9 percent of its residents returning home. Unfortunately, at most facilities, fewer than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home in any area came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. We looked at the skill-level of nurses at the facility, as well as the quantity of hours those nurses were with patients, in computing our score in this category. This facility provided just 3.1 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This figure is significantly below the national average. Finally, nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this facility actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses to assist its residents.

The final category we analyzed was long-term care. In this category, we awarded this facility a grade of C. If you are looking for anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care ratings. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is better than the average nursing home. Lastly, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.