Heritagespring Healthcare Center of West Chester

The primary reason this facility received a decent overall score is its excellent health inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better scores in that category, with an A+. This is a much better grade than the place's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite insignificant. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to be an immediate threat to patient health or safety. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

This nursing home was awarded its next most favorable category score in the area of long-term care. We gave this facility a B- in this area, which is a respectable score. For prospective patients seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were pleased to learn that this nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Finally, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of C in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. Nursing ratings are tied to nurse staffing levels. This nursing home provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a low total compared with most other facilities. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures. While this place got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in some of these quality metrics. With less than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed well in this area. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a system of turning patients more frequently.

The final category we analyzed was short-term care. This nursing home received a C in the category. In determining our short-term care grades, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to create a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we considered in this area is the number of residents who returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below average.