Golden Living Center-Knox

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this facility outperformed its overall grade in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest scores in this area with a grade of A+. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This nursing home was awarded its second best category score in the category of short-term care. We gave this facility a grade of B- in this area, which is an acceptable grade. Our short-term care grades are crucial for prospective residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a wide scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its level of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its patients based on the metrics we assessed. The question is whether this also impacted quality of care. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually well below average.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. In calculating our nursing scores, we analyze both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a somewhat alarming figure which is well below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place fared better in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it performed well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

This facility's least impressive category is long-term care, which is the last area we analyzed. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F in this area. In spite of several solid grades in other categories, this score is still disappointing so we would like to to draw your attention to it. For residents seeking a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 97.63314 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is higher than the majority of nursing homes. To our surprise, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Sadly, some of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.