Heartland of Portsmouth

With an address in Portsmouth, Ohio, Heartland of Portsmouth is one of five nursing homes in the area. This facility received a bottom of the barrel overall rating based on the data we looked at. This facility didn't have much going for it. Finally, we were surprised to learn that this place received a decent score in the area of long-term care. You can find additional information on this category below.

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a B- for our inspections rating. In fact, the facility received very impressive inspection report this year. Inspection scores account for several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. While this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

As it turns out, this facility only received a grade of D for its short-term care rating, which ended up being one of its higher category grades. In the area of short-term care, we try to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We analyze a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who ultimately returned home from this nursing home. It performed better in this area, with 50.6 percent of its patients returning home.

Additionally, we gave this nursing home an F in the area of long-term care. In a long-term care environment, the primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 94.52888 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this facility also wasn't as bad as we expected at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Although it had 2.48 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, its risk adjusted metric wasn't bad due to it having some more complicated patients.

The next area we scored was nursing. This facility was given an abysmal grade of F in that category. Our nursing score assesses many components, but the main one is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility offered just 3.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This number is quite a bit below the national average. On top of being below average in nursing hours per resident, this nursing home also had poor scores in the quality-based metrics we looked at in computing our nursing scores. We looked at the percentage of residents experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This nursing home was at roughly 1.5 times the national average in both of these statistics. This is a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. These metrics pulled down this nursing home's nursing grade quite a bit.