Heritage House of Shelbyville

Although we didn't grade this nursing home favorably overall, we did give it an excellent grade in the area of inspections, where it received an A-. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. You should avoid facilities with a bunch of deficiencies flagged. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to resident health or safety. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

The second best category we gave this facility in any area came in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of C. In determining our short-term care grades, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to create a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the typical facility. The last metric we considered in this area is the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that just 5.3 percent of this facility's residents returned home. This figure was below average.

Unfortunately, this facility received an F for its long-term care score. For patients in need of a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 99.16318 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is more than the majority of nursing homes. To our surprise, this nursing home also fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.

The final area we scored was nursing, where this facility received a very poor score in this area as well. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F for this category, which is obviously somewhat alarming. Our nursing rating is based on a variety of factors. The most important factor is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This facility offered a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This figure is well below the national average. To go along with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this nursing home also didn't perform as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in determining our nursing scores. We looked at the percentage of residents sustaining major falls and pressure ulcers. This facility had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average nursing home.