Heritage Acres Nursing Home

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our nursing rating. Nursing scores are tied to quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also was awarded a high-end long-term care grade. This actually turned out to be this nursing home's second strongest category grade. In that area, this facility received a score of A-. For patients in need of a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 87.5 percent of its patients, which is a few points lower than we expected. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home also was given a dominant short-term care score. In fact, this is this facility's third strongest category grade. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of A-. Short-term care ratings are critical for patients looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a vast scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

This nursing home has received near flawless inspections in recent years. We gave them an A- in this category. This is one of the few places in the country to receive an A- or better in all four categories. Inspection ratings weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this area typically have few of these severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home received 6 deficiencies on its inspection report. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.