Heritage Hall Tazewell

We want to point out that this facility outperformed its overall score in the area of inspections. In fact, it received an excellent government inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our highest scores in that area with an A+. Inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

We also awarded this nursing home a positive grade in long-term care. This nursing home earned a grade of B in this area, which happens to be one of our better grades. Facilities that receive this type of score in long-term care typically provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure residents are well cared for. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 99.15612 percent of its patients, which is more than the vast majority of nursing homes. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Next we looked at nursing grades, where this nursing home received an F, which is a rock bottom grade. This area was definitely not a strength for this facility. Our nursing score analyzes the facility's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of skill of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This facility offered a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is well below average. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. This facility fared well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

Switching gears to our final category, this facility didn't fare very well. Due to a bottom of the barrel grade of F in short-term care, this is this nursing home's weakest area. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we analyze a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other types of therapists. This category is more often than not a meaningful measure of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. Given its abysmal score in this category, we weren't shocked to discover that this place offered significantly fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most nursing homes. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.