Heartland of Kettering

We want to point out that this nursing home outperformed its overall score in the category of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our best grades in that category with an A-. Arguably the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This nursing home performed well in nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- for that category, which is one of our best grades. Our nursing grade weighs many datapoints, but the most important consideration is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics. While this facility got docked a bit for nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in a few of these quality measures. With less than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this metric. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning residents even once per day.

This nursing home's third highest area is short-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. Our short-term care grade is generally used to assess a facility's rehabilitation services To have highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to have higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than a typical facility. The hope is always that this does not adversely affect the quality of care. The last metric we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.

This facility's weakest category was long-term care, which is the last area we assessed. In this area, we awarded this facility a grade of just D. If you are looking for services other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care scores. After looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. We were pleased to discover that this nursing home vaccinated 97.026024 percent of its patients against pneumonia. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.