Heritage of Bel Air

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively insignificant. This place received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In that area, we gave this facility an A. Our nursing grade is based on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of training of those nurses and the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

We also want to note the fact that this nursing home received a first-rate grade of A- in our long-term care area. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. After considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 99.41349 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The last area we analyzed is short-term care, where this facility was awarded an A-. This finished off a first-rate report card. Very few facilities earned an A- or higher in every category. With our short-term care assessment, we seek to forge a valuable gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze the facility's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we considered in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 5.2 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.