Heritage of Emerson

In addition to being a great nursing home overall, it also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were nearly perfect. Inspection ratings are tied to many items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this category have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also would like to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received a top-shelf grade of A in our long-term care area. Facilities that receive this kind of score in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are well cared for. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 99.047615 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Nursing scores are based largely on levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning patients at least once a day.

Switching gears to our fourth category, this nursing home also performed well in our short-term care category. In fact, we awarded it an A- in this category. This topped off truly elite report card. In the area of short-term care, we seek to qualify indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.