Crystal Care Center of Franklin Furnace

To go along with its decent overall grade, we awarded this facility an A- for our inspections rating. This grade is far better than the facility's overall grade. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection grades. One critical 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. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was awarded an impressive long-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B+ in this category, which is one of our better. If you are seeking anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care scores. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 72.34042 percent of its residents, which is a bit lower than we anticipated. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The next most favorable area we gave this facility in any category came in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of C. Short-term care scores are vital for residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a vast range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The last category we graded is nursing. We gave this facility a D in nursing, rendering this its weakest area. Our nursing rating focuses on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of licensure of the nurses as well as the number of hours spent with residents. This place averaged only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. To pair with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this place also did not fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and major falls. This facility had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average nursing home.