Hickory Creek at Columbus

In addition to being a respectable nursing home overall, this place also excelled in the category of inspections, where it received an A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with better scores in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This facility was assessed 7 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to create an immediate threat to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also gave this nursing home a favorable grade in long-term care. This facility earned a grade of B in this area, which happens to be one of our more impressive grades. For residents in need of a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is a very important category. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 81.73913 percent of its patients, which is slightly below what we anticipated. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Another one of this nursing home's better category grades was in the category of short-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a B. Short-term care scores are crucial for patients in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a vast range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Switching gears to our final category, this nursing home received a grade of C for nursing, which we consider to be an acceptable score. Nursing scores are mostly based on a facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a somewhat uninspiring figure as it is well below average. Finally, our nursing scores also consider some quality-focused measures. We especially like to look at the percentage of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. These statistics are decent indicators of the quality of nursing care, since better care can reduce these problems.