Heritage Hall Lexington

The primary reason this nursing home received a decent overall score is its impeccable government inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our higher scores in that area, with an A. This is a notably better grade than the facility's overall grade, which was decent but not in the elite range. Our inspection ratings are tied to many items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this area typically have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also gave this facility a positive score in long-term care. This nursing home received a grade of B+ in this category, which turns out to be one of our higher scores. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in this category it is typically a good sign for resident care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 99.50249 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of C. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with levels of nurse staffing. 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. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place actually fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It scored well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the number of hours of care provided.

This facility's least impressive area is short-term care, which is the final category we analyzed. Sadly, it received an abysmal F for this category. In spite of a few solid grades in other areas, this score is still concerning so we would like to to make a note of it. In the category of short-term care, we seek to qualify measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. This definitely was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 4.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.