Franklin Ridge Healthcare Center

On top of being a quality nursing home overall, this place especially excelled in our inspections category, where it received an A. Not many nursing homes performed better in that category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively minor. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility is also strong in the area of long-term care, where it received a score of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is far higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facilities third best area was short-term care. We awarded it a grade of B- in this area. This is essentially a middle of the pack score in this area. Our short-term care scores are likely most critical for those needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. This includes not only nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below the national average.

The next category we scored was nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. When calculating a facility's nursing rating, we look at the quantity of hours nurses are caring for patients as well as the level of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also baked a few quality measures into our nursing scores. This facility was relatively weak in a few of the major areas we focus on, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. These areas are typically indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.