Heritage Hall - Leesburg

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

Adding to its impressive resume, this facility also excelled in our short-term care area. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in the area. In determining our short-term care grades, we scrutinize a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This area is frequently a fair measure of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 6.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Our nursing score assesses the facility's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the amount of time spent with residents. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The last area we assessed is long-term care. This nursing home received a very good nursing score in our assessment, with a grade of B. Although this is not as good as several of its other category grades, this remains one of our better scores in this category. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.