Heritage Park

Heritage Park is a large government-owned nursing home in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We gave this facility a C overall, which is not a bad score. This is comparable with the city grade in Fort Wayne, which is a B-. Based on our analysis, there are certainly far worse places out there. The best part of this place's profile is its remarkable inspection grade. We discuss inspections in the next section.

To pair with its relatively modest overall grade, we gave this facility an A for its inspection grade. This is far more impressive than the facility's overall rating. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively minor. While this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you that the 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 of minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

This facility's next highest category ended up being short-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a B-. Short-term care ratings are critical for individuals needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a vast range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. One reason for this facility's strong score in this category is that it provides a greater volume of physical therapist hours to its residents than the average nursing home. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that it outperformed the majority of facilities in the country in this area with 51.8 percent of its residents returning home. This is a higher rate than most nursing homes.

This nursing home's next highest area came in the area of long-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a C. In the area of long-term care, we focus on the quantity of care provided by a nursing home, as opposed to more medically-intensive services. After we finished looking at the amount of nursing care, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. We were optimistic to learn that this nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 1.68 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes.

The next category we analyzed is nursing, which is this facility's least impressive category. Sadly, it received a lowly F in this area, which is clearly very disappointing. Nursing scores are primarily associated with a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 3.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is slightly below the national average. To pair with its low total nursing hours per patient, this nursing home had really bad marks in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in determining our nursing grades. We looked at the percent of patients sustaining falls which led to major injury. This place was at more than 150 percent of the national average in this statistic.