Heritage Hall Blackstone

In addition to being a respectable nursing home overall, this place really excelled in the category of inspections, where it received an A-. Few facilities performed better in this category. Inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this category usually have few of these severe deficiencies. 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.

This nursing home also received a strong long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of B+ in that category, which is one of our more favorable scores. Facilities that excel in this category tend to provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 96.01518 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. The nursing category weighs many components, most of which are associated with nursing hours. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, although this nursing home got docked a bit for nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of our quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this area.

The next area we rated is short-term care, which ended up being this nursing home's weakest category. It received an abysmal F in this category, which is certainly concerning. Our short-term care grades are presumably more important for people requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. This includes not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, we discovered that this facility offered less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most facilities. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.