Heritage Living Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. In determining our nursing grades, we assess both nursing hours and the training levels of the nurses. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home Minnesota in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a patient more frequently.

This nursing home was given strong marks in the area of short-term care. For this reason, it received one of our highest grades in that area with a grade of A+. In forming our short-term care scores, 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. The purpose is to devise a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.6 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Turning to our inspection category, this nursing home excelled in that area, which is based on the nursing home's recent government inspection reports. In fact, we gave it an A- for that category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some are relatively minor. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple relatively minor dings are not something to panic about.

The last area we rated is long-term care. In this category, we awarded this facility a favorable grade of B. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 99.13044 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is too frequently a life or death ailment for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home does not take any chances. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.