Heritage Hills Living & Rehabilitation Center

Even though this facility's overall score was not a highlight, it actually earned a very good score in long-term care. In fact, we gave it a grade of B for that area, which is one of our better scores. Facilities that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia tragically can be a deadly health condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility does not take any chances. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility was awarded its second best category grade in the area of short-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of C in this area, which is a decent grade. Our short-term care grades are presumably more important for individuals requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. This means not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. We were surprised to find that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. The facility offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

Sadly, this facility received a grade of just D in our inspection category. This is well below average grade. Inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. This facility was assessed 4 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only favorable thing we can say is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that suggest they created a risk to patient health or safety. Lastly, we want to draw your attention to the fact that this place received large government fines in recent years exceeding $50,000. This usually indicates that CMS inspectors became fed up after multiple years of failed government inspections.

The last area we looked at is nursing, which was this facility's least impressive area. We awarded this facility a D in that area. There are quite a few criteria included in this category. Most of these data points are tied to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This place offered a meager 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient each day. To go along with its low total nursing hours per resident, this facility had really poor scores in several of the quality-based metrics we looked at in determining our nursing grades. We looked at the percent of patients having falls which led to major injury. This nursing home was at more than 150 percent of the national average in this statistic. This is quite concerning in light of the fact that so many falls could likely be prevented with better nursing care. This ended up sealing the nursing home's fate of receiving a poor nursing score.