Heritage Healthcare of Pickens

One of the many reasons this proved to be a great facility is that it earned a very impressive long-term care score. This turned out to be its best grade. In that area, we awarded this facility an A. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. Once we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia can be a life threatening illness for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility does not roll the dice on this issue. Lastly, we looked at the nursing home's number of hospitalizations. Although it had 2.55 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, its risk adjusted metric was close to the middle of the pack since it had some more complicated patients.

In addition, this nursing home also received a nearly flawless government inspection report. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that area with a score of A. Our inspection scores are based on several datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspections. Places that receive favorable grades in this area have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also performed well in the category of short-term care, where it received a score of A-. Not many nursing homes performed better in this category. In determining our short-term care ratings, we size up a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This category is more often than not a solid measure of a facility's rehabilitation services. One of this nursing home's strengths is physical therapy hours. We found that it offers more hours with physical therapists to its residents than most facilities. The final metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that it fared better than most nursing homes in this area with 51 percent of its residents returning home.

In our final category, this facility also was given a first-rate nursing rating, with a grade of A-. This topped off a straight A profile. Our nursing score looks at the facility's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of licensure of those nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home provides 3.9 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is better than what is offered by most facilities. Finally, we also looked at nursing quality measures in determining our nursing scores. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these statistics as reliable measures of the caliber of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.