Heritage Hall-Rich Creek

While this facility'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. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection ratings. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some are quite insignificant. This place was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to resident health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

The second most favorable category we awarded this nursing home in any area came in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of C. Our long-term care grade is often used to grade a nursing home's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing more on the skilled nursing services offered by a skilled nursing facility. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. We were pleased to learn that this nursing home vaccinated 98.191216 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Finally, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of C. We assessed the skill-level of nurses employed by the facility, as well as the quantity of time the nurses worked with patients, in determining our grade in this area. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This figure is significantly below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In fact, it performed well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good 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 offered.

The next category we looked at was short-term care. Sadly, it received an abysmal F in this area, which is a poor grade. This is clearly a major concern. With our short-term care category, we seek to craft a meaningful gauge for rehabilitation. In doing so, we assess a facility's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who returned home from this nursing home. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.