Heritage Court Post Acute of Scottsdale

One of the reasons this turned out to be a great facility is that it received a strong short-term care score. In fact, this turned out to be its best category. In that category, we gave this nursing home an impressive grade of A. Our short-term care ratings are probably more critical for people requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically requires more skilled nursing services. This means not merely nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 6.7 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Adding to its superb profile, this nursing home also excelled in our long-term care category. In fact, it received a score of A in that area. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 98.97959 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home also earned excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our best grades in that category, with an A-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection scores. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite insignificant. 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.

In our last area, we gave this facility a A- for our nursing rating. This topped off a very favorable report card. Our nursing score is based on a handful of factors, most of which are tied to quantities of nurse staffing. This facility provided 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 facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.