Heritage Hall Blacksburg

Heritage Hall Blacksburg is one of only two facilities located in Blacksburg, Virginia. This nursing home is a respectable facility, with an overall grade of C. Based on our assessment, this nursing home ought to meet the needs of many people. One of the best aspects of this nursing home's profile is its remarkable inspection score, which we will address in the next paragraph.

While this nursing home's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category, which is one of our best scores. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this area typically have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

Another one of this facility's more favorable category grades came in the area of long-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B+. Facilities that receive this kind of score in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are well cared for. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 99.77477 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is better than most nursing homes. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.54 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than most nursing homes.

This facility's third best area turned out to be its short-term care score, where it was given a grade of C. Our short-term care grade is typically used to gauge a facility's performance with rehabilitation To offer highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally must offer better levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than the average facility. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This was a much stronger area for this facility. This place outperformed most facilities in this metric with 58 percent of its residents returning home.

The last area we graded was nursing. We gave it a lowly F in this category, which is a very poor score. This is certainly a major disappointment. Our nursing score weighs a handful of subcategories, but the paramount consideration is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home provides 3.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. To pair with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this facility also did not perform as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in determining our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This facility had more pressure ulcers and falls than the average nursing home. This could be a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores and falls are preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, these statistics hurt this nursing home's nursing rating significantly.