Dickson Health and Rehab

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a grade of B for our long-term care rating. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 90.39548 percent of its residents. This is a few points lower than we anticipated but still a decent percentage. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

We wanted to point out that this nursing home received an F for its inspection grade. An F in this category is particularly troublesome because it usually points to major red flags on the nursing home's inspection reports. With facilities that received this poor of an inspection rating, we recommend scrutinizing any severe deficiencies on its inspection report. This facility was hit with 4 deficiencies by CMS. The only favorable thing we can say is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they created a threat to resident health or safety. Lastly, we also would like to point out that this place was assessed significant government fines amounting to more than $100,000. This often signifies that a nursing home'spoor performance spanned several years.

Unfortunately, we gave this facility an F for its short-term care score. Our short-term care grades are probably more important for residents requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. With its weak score in this area, we were not shocked to find this place offers significantly fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most facilities. The final item we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar statistics was damning for this facility's short-term care grade.

The last area we assessed is nursing. This facility was given a very poor grade of F in that area. When calculating our nursing ratings, we look at both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This place averaged a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is well below average. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing ratings. This facility performed well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls.