Heritage Health-Minonk

In addition to being a top notch facility overall, this place also performed well in the area of inspections, where it received an A. Not many nursing homes performed better in this category. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this area typically have very few severe deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing rating is largely associated with a nursing home's nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving patients more often.

Moving on our third area, this nursing home received first-rate short-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a score of A in that area. Short-term care grades are commonly used to judge a facility's rehabilitation services In order to offer highly graded rehabilitation services, facilities generally must provide higher levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 5.7 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Switching gears to the fourth area, this nursing home also excelled in our long-term care category. We gave it a grade of A- in that category. This completed a straight A report card. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are kept in good health. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients healthy. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.