Heritage Health Care Center

We also wanted to emphasize that this nursing home earned near flawless inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A+ in this category. Inspection grades account for several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this category tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. 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 an excellent sign.

Adding to its high-end resume, this nursing home also performed well in our short-term care area. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in the category. In computing our short-term care scores, we scrutinize a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This rating is generally a reliable assessment of the facility's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who returned home from the nursing home. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

This facility also was given a fine long-term care score. This actually is its third strongest category score. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of A. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. Once we concluded our assessment of the volume of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a life threatening condition for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In the last category we looked at, this nursing home received a very strong grade of B+ in our nursing category. With this score, the facility wrapped up a very impressive report card. Our nursing category weighs many subcategories, most of which are associated with quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also factored a few quality measures into our nursing grades. This nursing home was relatively weak in two of the major areas we focus on, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.