Heritage Health Care Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some can be quite insignificant. 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.

Compounding its strong performance in other areas, we gave this nursing home a score of A for its short-term care score. Our short-term care grade is typically used to gauge a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to have quality rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must provide higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Turning the page to our third category, this nursing home was given a strong long-term care score. In fact, it received a grade of A- in this category. When facilities receive this kind of score in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Switching gears to our last category, this facility was awarded a very strong nursing grade. We awarded it a grade of A- in that area, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. When computing our nursing grades, we analyze both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.