Heritage Gardens Rehabilitation and Healthcare

We want to point out that this facility outperformed its overall score in the area of inspections. In fact, it received an excellent inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our highest grades in this area with an A. These inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

Additionally, we also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received strong long-term care marks this year. We awarded them one of our more favorable grades in that area, with a grade of B. This proved to be the facility's second strongest grade. When nursing homes receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is typically a good sign for resident care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 98.907104 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a dangerous ailment for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility does not take any chances. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

One of this facility's better category grades was in the area of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of C. The nursing category analyzes quite a few subcategories, most of which are based on levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a low total compared to most other nursing homes. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility surprisingly excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It scored well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls.

Moving on to the fourth area, this facility really didn't perform very well. Due to a very poor grade of F in short-term care, this is this nursing home's weakest grade. In the category of short-term care, we try to evaluate measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Considering its weak score in this category, we weren't stunned to learn this place offers far fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most nursing homes. The final measure we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 3.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor statistics doomed this facility's short-term care grade.