Hickory Creek at Greensburg

In addition to being a quality facility overall, this nursing home really excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A. Not many facilities performed better in this category. Our inspection ratings are tied to pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this area tend to have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This place was assessed 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that CMS didn't consider any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so well is that it was given a dominant long-term care score. In fact, long-term care turned out to be its second highest category score. In that category, we awarded this facility a score of A-. When facilities receive this type of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for resident care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.34 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than many nursing homes.

This nursing home was given its next best category grade in the category of short-term care. We gave this facility a grade of B- in this category, which is an acceptable grade. Short-term care ratings are based on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a vast scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. The last datapoint we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.

The last area we analyzed was nursing. We gave this nursing home a C in this category. Nursing grades are based largely on levels of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 3.1 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This figure is significantly below average. Lastly, our nursing ratings also consider some quality-focused metrics. We especially like to look at the percent of patients who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. These data points are decent indicators of the quality of nursing care, since superior care can reduce these issues.