Heritage Hall Blackstone

In addition to earning a strong overall grade, this facility fared even better in our inspections category which is based on the nursing home's recent inspections. We gave it an A for that area, which is one of our highest grades. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. 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.

We also awarded this nursing home a score of A- for our long-term care grade. When facilities receive this type of score in this category it is usually a good sign for resident care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 96.63551 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. This wasn't quite as good as some of its other scores, but a grade in this range is not the end of the world. Our nursing rating focuses on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of licensure of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This nursing home provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a relatively low total compared with most facilities. Lastly, we also assessed several nursing quality measures. While this facility got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared well in this statistic. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving a patient more often.

Moving on to the next area, we gave this facility a D in the area of short-term care. This was the facility's worst category score. Of course, this score hurt the facility's overall grade a bit. In computing our short-term care grades, we analyze a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This grade is more often than not a solid measure of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. The final item we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to return home from the facility. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 3.7 percent of its patients returning home.