Franklin Nursing Home

To pair with its relatively modest overall score, we gave this facility an A+ for our inspections rating. This is far better than the facility's overall grade. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this area usually have few of these severe deficiencies. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. You really can't do much better than a deficiency-free inspection report.

This facility also was awarded a strong long-term care grade. In fact, we gave them a B in that category, which happens to be one of our better. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. After considering the amount of nursing care, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a dangerous ailment for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't take any chances. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of C, which is a decent grade. We looked at the levels of nurses at the facility, in addition to the quantity of hours those nurses worked with residents, in determining our rating in this category. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Lastly, although this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in some of our quality metrics. With less than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it performed very well in this statistic.

The final area we graded was short-term care, which proved to be this facility's worst category. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D in this area. Of course, this grade pulled down the facility's overall profile to some degree. Short-term care grades are based on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a vast spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. We found that this facility was subpar in several staffing areas we assessed. In fact, it supplied fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most nursing homes. The last item we considered in this area is the percentage of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 4.5 percent of its residents returning home.