Heritage Living Center

We also found that this facility excelled in long-term care. We awarded them an A+ in this area. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 98.07692 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this place 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 one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This nursing home also received an A+ inspection grade, making it one of the few facilities to receive multiple A+'s in our category grades. This score is based on the place's government inspections. An A+ in this area is one of the highest complements we can pay to a facility. Our inspection grades account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. This nursing home received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to create an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to alert you to the fact that this nursing home was given an elite score of A in our short-term care area. With our short-term care category, we try to create a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we analyze the nursing home's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we looked at in this area is the number of patients that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

In our last category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our nursing score. This topped off a very strong profile. There are numerous criteria within this category. Many of these data points relate to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning patients more frequently.