Heritage Hall Wise

The primary reason this nursing home received a decent overall grade is its impeccable government inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better scores in that category, with an A. This is a notably better score than the place's overall grade, which was decent but not in the elite range. Arguably the most important factor we consider in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

Another one of this nursing home's better category scores came in the area of long-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of B. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 95.987656 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. There are quite a few datapoints within this grade. Many of these criteria reflect staffing levels. This nursing home provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a somewhat concerning figure as it is well below the national average. Finally, although this facility got dinged a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in some of our quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it fared remarkably well in this statistic.

This nursing home's weakest category was short-term care, which is the final area we assessed. Sadly, it received a lowly F for this category. In spite of a few respectable scores in other areas, this grade is still alarming so we would like to to make a note of it. Our short-term care grades are based in part on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a wide range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This wasn't a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 4.2 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, about half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.