Franke Health Care Center

One of the reasons this place ended up being a quality nursing home is that it earned an A+ in our inspections category. This is just about as good as it gets in this critical category. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with better grades in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also want to draw your attention to the fact that this facility was awarded a superb grade of A in our long-term care area. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. Once we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is often a deadly health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing score is mostly tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home 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 often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Moving on to the last category, this nursing home was awarded a respectable short-term care grade. While this is not quite as impressive as a few of its other grades, this is still not a poor grade. Short-term care grades are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a wide spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, in addition to other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 4 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.