The Heights on Huebner

This facility received a quality overall grade as described above, but we especially want to emphasize its excellent inspections in recent years. We awarded it an impressive grade of A in this category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some are relatively insignificant. 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

This facility also received an impressive short-term care score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B+ in this area. In the category of short-term care, we seek to qualify indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We analyze a facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. We weren't able to locate registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. The last measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Turning to an additional strength for this facility, we awarded them one of our better scores in our long-term care category as well, with a B. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia tragically can be a life or death ailment for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The final area we assessed is nursing. This nursing home received a very good nursing score in our assessment, with a grade of B. This nursing home really does not have any weak grades. There are numerous subcategories included in this category. Most of the data points reflect the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving patients even once per day.