Heritage Park Health and Rehabilitation Center

In addition to having a decent overall score, we also want to point out that this place received favorable inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better scores in that category, with a B+. This is a notably better grade than the nursing home's overall grade. Inspection ratings weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. While this facility had some deficiencies on its report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. A couple minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This facilities second most favorable category is long-term care. We gave it a grade of B- in this area. This is essentially a slightly below average score in this area. Our long-term care grades are vital for prospective residents needing non-healthcare services such as personal care. One of the factors we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours is vaccinations. Thankfully, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 99.45206 percent of its residents. Finally, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home's nursing grade appears to be one of its better features. The facility received a grade of C in this category. Nursing grades are primarily tied to the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures. Although this place got dinged a bit for nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its patients sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed very well in this subcategory. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a policy of turning a resident more frequently.

Switching gears to the final area, this nursing home was awarded a grade of C for short-term care, which we consider to be an acceptable grade. Short-term care scores are based in part on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a vast spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its level of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. The question is whether this adversely impacted quality of care. The final datapoint we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.6 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.