Heritage Health-Normal

While we graded this nursing home incredibly poorly overall, it received a decent short-term care score this year. We gave it a B- in that category, which was the closest thing to a bright spot we can find for this facility. Our short-term care ratings are based in part on the facility's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a vast spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. We were surprised to find that this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. It provided fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. The final metric we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that just 5.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.

We were also surprised to find that this facility received a decent nursing grade this year. We gave it a grade of C in that category. Our nursing grade focuses on the facility's nurse staffing levels. We consider both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This place provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a lower figure than we were hoping for. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home surprisingly fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In fact, it performed well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.

The third area we assessed is long-term care, where this facility received an F. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. Once we finished looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. We were optimistic to learn that this nursing home vaccinates 97.49374 percent of its patients for pneumonia. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.

The last category we assessed is inspections. This nursing home did not receive favorable inspections in recent years. As a result, we gave it an F here. You should pay special attention to any deficiencies on a facility's inspection reports when it receives this bad of an inspection rating. We suggest you scrutinize the severity of those deficiencies. This particular facility was hit with 7 deficiencies by CMS. The only favorable thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that suggest they posed a risk to resident safety or health. 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.