Heartwood Extended Healthcare

Heartwood Extended Healthcare is an average-sized nursing home located in Tacoma, Washington. This facility is a relatively poor facility. A score in this range suggests we found some red flags. If you aren't happy with this facility's overall grade, you should be able to find a better option in Tacoma. The city has at least 10 other nursing homes. We would not blame you if you are ready to stop reading and find another facility. However, if you want to learn more about this facility's category grades, we will discuss long-term care in the next paragraph.

Although this facility's overall grade was not a highlight, it actually received a very good grade in long-term care. We gave it a B for that area, which is one of our better scores. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are well cared for. Once we concluded our assessment of the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 99.05363 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly is often a dangerous health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. This facility was also able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 1.45 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.

This nursing home's second most favorable area was short-term care. We awarded it a grade of B- in this area. This is basically a slightly below average score in this area. Our short-term care grades are critical for residents needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires more highly-skilled nursing services. This means a broad scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than the average facility. The final metric we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. This was more of a strength than its staffing data. This place fared well in this metric with 56.2 percent of its patients returning home. This was a boost to its grade in this category.

We awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of nursing as well, with a grade of C. Our nursing grade analyzes the facility's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This facility provides 4.8 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is better than average. In computing our nursing ratings, we add additional weight to hours performed by more highly skilled nurses such as registered or licensed nurses. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in some quality-focused statistics. Specifically, we look at the percent of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these datapoints as reliable measures of the quality of nursing care, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

Turning the last category of inspections, this ended up being this nursing home's weakest link. Inspection grades are based on a facility's recent inspections. We gave this nursing home just a D in this category, which is a very poor grade. One of the most critical factors in evaluating inspection reports is deficiencies. We recommend you pay close attention to the level of severity of those deficiencies. This facility was hit with 6 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only favorable thing we found is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that suggest they created a threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility also received a substantiated complaint in the last few years. There seem to be no shortage of reasons to pass on this facility.