Regal Heights Healthcare & Rehab Center

While we didn't give this nursing home a good overall score, we actually gave it a very strong grade in the area of nursing, where it earned a B. Nursing grades are heavily correlated with quantity of nursing care available. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home's second best category was long-term care. We gave it a grade of C in this category. This is basically a slightly below average grade in this area. In determining our long-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's ability to maintain its permanent residents' health and quality of life. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 93.30144 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is a few points below what we expected but still a respectable percentage. Fortunately, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility's second worse score is short-term care, where it earned a grade of just D in that area. This is a well below average score. In determining our short-term care ratings, we size up the facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This rating is frequently a solid assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation. Given its weak score in this area, we weren't shocked to find this place offered substantially fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most facilities. Finally, we assessed the number of residents that eventually returned home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.9 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.

Moving on our final category of inspections, this nursing home received a grade that's as bad as it gets. We weight this grade more heavily than other categories. We would advise paying special attention to any deficiencies on a nursing home's inspection reports when it receives this poor of an inspection grade. We would pay close attention to the level of severity of those deficiencies. This particular facility was assessed a category G through L deficiency, which rank among the more serious deficiencies. These categories indicate that the deficiencies uncovered by inspectors had the potential to cause actual harm to patients. Finally, we also would like to point out that this facility received significant government fines recently totaling more than $100,000. This often indicates that a bad track record has been an issue for several years.