Heritage Oaks

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable inspection report this year. As a result, it received a decent grade in that category with a score of B-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

This nursing home also didn't grade out terribly in the area of short-term care. Indeed, we awarded it a C for that category, which wound up being among its higher grades. Our short-term care scores are important for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing. This means a wide spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, this place was below average in terms of its number of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its patients based on the measures we assessed. The question is whether this also impacted quality of care. The last datapoint we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.

We gave this facility a grade of just D for our nursing rating. In determining our nursing ratings, we weigh both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the training levels of those nurses. This facility averaged only 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident daily. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. This place fared well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these statistics to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final area we analyzed is long-term care, in which this nursing home received an abysmal score here also. Sadly, it received an F in this category, which is obviously a major disappointment. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. One of the criteria we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccines. Thankfully, this facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 97.07113 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this facility also fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had just 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Sadly, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.