Heritage Hall - Brookneal

While this nursing home's overall grade was not bad, 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 highest scores. Inspection grades are tied to items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another one of this facility's more favorable category grades came in the area of long-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a B+. It actually performed better than most nursing homes in this area. Facilities that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this place 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 one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to another strength for this facility, it also received an elite nursing grade. We gave this facility a score of D. Nursing ratings are based in large part on nurse staffing levels. With a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day, this facility's nurse staffing levels were well below the national average. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing scores. This facility performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these statistics to be indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Switching gears to our next area, we gave this nursing home a grade of D in short-term care. This was the facility's worst category score. Sadly, this score hurt the nursing home's overall profile to a certain degree. In forming our short-term care scores, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to create a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The final item 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 4.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar metrics was damning for this nursing home's short-term care grade.