Heritage Healthcare Center

To pair with its relatively modest overall grade, we awarded this nursing home an A+ for its inspection grade. This grade is far more impressive than its overall grade. Inspection ratings are tied to several items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Based on this, we still had positive view of this nursing home's inspections.

Another one of this facility's better category scores came in the category of long-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. It actually fared better than most facilities in this area. When facilities receive this type of score in long-term care it is a good sign for resident care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a life threatening condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Next we looked at nursing grades, where this nursing home received an F, which is a rock bottom grade. This area was definitely not a strength for this facility. In computing a facility's nursing grade, we assess the quantity of hours nurses are with residents and the levels of training of those nurses. This facility provided only 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is well below average. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. This facility performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

The next area we looked at is short-term care, which turned out to be this facility's weakest area. Sadly, it received an abysmal F for this category, which is obviously very concerning. In determining our short-term care scores, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to devise a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. As you might expect, we found that this nursing home offers significantly less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than a typical facility. Finally, we assessed the number of patients that were able to return home from this facility. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.