Heritage Inn of Sandersville Health and Rehab

On top of faring well overall, this nursing home received nearly flawless government inspections. Therefore, it earned one of our best scores in that area with an A+. These inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to this facility's list of accomplishments, it also received a very favorable long-term care score. We awarded them a dominant grade of A- in this area. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The next best category we gave this facility in any area came in the category of short-term care, where we gave it a B-. Short-term care scores are based in part on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a wide spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

Moving on to the next area, this facility received an acceptable nursing score. Even though this isn't quite as strong as some of its other category grades, this is truly nothing to be ashamed of. Our nursing grade assesses the facility's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home actually excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It scored well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many 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 offered.