Heritage Center

Although we graded this facility extremely poorly overall, it received a somewhat respectable nursing rating this year. We gave it a B- in that category. Our nursing score is based on the facility's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of skill of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures. Although this nursing home got docked a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it did well in this metric. This is typically a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of turning a patient even once per day.

We were also stunned to find that this nursing home received a decent long-term care rating in our assessment. We gave it a B- in that area. If you are looking for services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care scores. One of the factors we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccines. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 92.70833 percent of its patients. On a more positive note, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Moving on to the area of short-term care, this facility was given just a D in this category. Our short-term care ratings are presumably more meaningful for individuals needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. This was not a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 4 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, about half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.

Moving on our last category of inspections, this nursing home received an F here. With places that received this bad of an inspection rating, we would scrutinize any severe deficiencies on its inspection report. This nursing home was hit with 6 deficiencies by CMS. The only positive thing we can say is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that indicate they created a threat to resident safety or health. Lastly, this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.