Franklin Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing

While this facility's overall grade was not bad, it really fared well in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A+ for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

This facility also was given a strong score in our long-term care category. We gave this nursing home a better than average grade of B in this area. For prospective residents looking for a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are an important measure. After looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 84.88161 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is somewhat less than we expected but still a respectable figure. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We gave this nursing home a grade of just D for our short-term care score. This is well below average in this category. In crafting our short-term care grades, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to devise a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Not surprisingly, we learned that this facility provides substantially less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average nursing home. The last datapoint we assessed in this category is the number of residents who ultimately returned home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 4.2 percent of its patients returning home.

The final area we graded is nursing, which is this nursing home's weakest area. Sadly, it received a lowly F for this category, which is obviously concerning. In determining our nursing ratings, we analyze both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. This nursing home also had terrible scores in some of the quality-based measures to go along with its low nursing hour totals. We looked at the percentage of patients experiencing pressure ulcers and we were quite disappointed. This place was at approximately 1.5 times the national average in this area. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that many pressure ulcers are preventable with better nursing care. This statistic helped pull down this facility's nursing score quite a bit.