Heritage Care Center

To go along with its impressive overall grade, we awarded this nursing home an A for our nursing grade. Our nursing score is primarily based on a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we gave it an B+ for that category, which is one of our highest scores. This is one of the few facilities with an overall score in this range which received multiple category grades this high. Inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

The third area we assessed is short-term care. This facility received an impressive short-term care score, with a grade of B+ in the category. In our short-term care rating, we strive to create a valuable measure for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess a nursing home's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

The final area we analyzed is long-term care, where this nursing home was awarded a C. Although this is its least impressive category score, this is still nothing to be ashamed of. If you are seeking anything other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care ratings. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. This nursing home also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.