Heritage Hall Nursing Center

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility earned an A+ inspection grade. This score is based on its recent government inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the best complements we can offer a facility. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent 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 was awarded a strong long-term care grade. In fact, this ended up being this nursing home's second strongest category score. In that category, we gave this facility a score of A. For prospective residents in need of a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are a key measure. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 89.79592 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is somewhat less than we were hoping for but still a respectable percentage. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, at least this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility also was superb in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a score of A-. Only a select group of facilities fared better in this area. In calculating our short-term care scores, we assess the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. This category is frequently a reliable assessment of a facility's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 6.4 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The next category we scored is nursing, where this nursing home received a B. Even though this wound up being its poorest category score, this is still an above average grade. There are many criteria within this category. Many of these criteria reflect nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 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 place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.