Heritage Health-El Paso

This facility received a strong overall grade as described above, but we especially would like to point out its excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this area. These inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more 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 an excellent sign.

Among this facility's other achievements is its first-rate long-term care grade. It received one of our strongest scores in that category, with a grade of A-. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure patients are well cared for. 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 administered the vaccine to 98.95288 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is often a life threatening health condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Among this facility's other strengths is its elite nursing grade. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of A-. When computing a facility's nursing rating, we weigh the number of hours nurses are seeing patients and the level of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Switching gears to the last category, we gave this facility a grade of D in short-term care. This was the nursing home's worst category rating. However, we would not dwell on a single weak grade. Our short-term care scores are likely more meaningful for individuals in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that just 3.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.