Heisinger Lutheran Home

On top of being a quality nursing home overall, this nursing home really fared well in our long-term care category, where it earned an impressive grade of A-. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 88.82979 percent of its patients. This is a few points lower than we were hoping for but still a respectable figure. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility also performed well in the area of inspections. It received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. It received one of our best grades in that category with an B+. Few facilities with an overall score in this range performed this well in multiple categories. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home received its next highest category grade in the area of short-term care. We gave this facility a grade of B- in this category, which is a respectable grade. In our short-term care category, we try to forge a sound measure for rehabilitation. In doing so, we look at a nursing home's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The next area we analyzed is nursing. This nursing home received a grade of C for this category. We weighed the levels of nurses employed by the facility, as well as the quantity of time the nurses were with patients, in determining our grade in this category. This place provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a low total compared with most other nursing homes. Finally, we also factored some quality measures into our nursing ratings. This nursing home was subpar in a few of the major areas we look at, with below average scores for minimizing its patients' major falls and pressure ulcers. These areas are typically reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care available.