Heritage Health-Gibson City

Although we did not rate this nursing home well overall, we want to point out its decent government inspections in recent years. We gave it a somewhat respectable score of B- in this area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some are relatively insignificant. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Lastly, this nursing home was cited by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. This is generally a really bad sign. We would never recommend this facility.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of B- for that category, which is not a bad score. Nursing ratings are primarily tied to a facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place excelled in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it scored well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

The next category we graded was short-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a B-. Our short-term care grades are thought to be more meaningful for people requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not just nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, this facility 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. The important question is whether this also affected quality of care. The final measure we assessed in this area is the number of patients who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.

The final category we graded is long-term care. We gave it a lowly F in this category, which is an abysmal score. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids, as well as the levels of routine medical care available. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated 88.14433 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be quite a few points below what we were hoping for. Surprisingly, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than most nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.