Hickory Creek at Franklin

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this place also received top notch health inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our higher scores in this category, with an A. Inspection scores are based on datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this area have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another one of this facility's above average category scores came in the area of long-term care. We gave them one of our better scores in that category, with a grade of B. For prospective residents seeking a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 64.485985 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is a few points below what we expected but still a decent figure. 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.

We also awarded this facility a solid score in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a grade of B-. In determining our short-term care grades, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to formulate a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents that ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually well below the national average.

Turning to the final category, this nursing home was given a grade of C in nursing, which is a decent score. When computing our nursing ratings, we factor in both nursing hours and the training levels of those nurses. This facility averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily, which is a very low figure. Finally, despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is usually an indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place.