Heartland of Waterville

While we were not high on this facility's overall performance, it actually received an impressive inspection report this year with few dings from the applicable government inspectors. As a result, it received one of our better grades in that area with a B+. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. It is typically best to avoid places that have too many severe deficiencies. While this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

This facilities next best category was short-term care. We gave it a C in this category. This is essentially a middle of the road score in this category. Our short-term care scores are vital for individuals in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a vast spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. We found that this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we assessed. It offered fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is still important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below the national average.

We gave this facility a grade of just D for our nursing rating. When calculating a facility's nursing grade, we weigh the number of hours nurses commit to residents as well as the level of licensure of the nurses. With just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day, this facility's nurse staffing levels were quite a bit below average. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing scores. This facility fared well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls.

The last area we rated is long-term care, proved to be this nursing home's least impressive category. We gave this nursing home a D in this category. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means the nursing home did not perform well in our quality measures relating to resident care. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. Frankly, we were a bit worried that this facility vaccinated 76.81818 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which happens to be several points lower than average. To our surprise, this facility actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best score in this category.