Heritage Park

While we were not high on this nursing home's overall grade, it received a very impressive inspection report this year. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it earned one of our best grades in that category with an A-. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This facility was awarded its second highest category grade in the area of short-term care. We gave this facility a grade of B- in this category, which is a respectable score. Short-term care scores are important for patients needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a wide spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its level of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its patients based on the measures we assessed. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the number of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that just 5.2 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below average.

This nursing home ended up receiving a bottom of the barrel grade in our long-term care area. It was given an F in this category. For patients seeking a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is a very important category. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Thankfully, this facility administered the vaccine to 99.38398 percent of its residents, which is an above average percentage. Surprisingly, this nursing home also keeps its residents out of the hospital. It had just 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.

The next category we scored was nursing, where this facility received a very poor grade in this category as well. We gave it a lowly F in this area, which is definitely a major disappointment. Our nursing score is mostly based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. In addition to receiving below average marks for total nursing hours, this place was a bit less impressive in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in calculating our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and found this place was at roughly 1.5 times the national average in this metric. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that many pressure ulcers are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, this statistic pulled down this facility's nursing grade substantially.