Hickory Creek at Rochester

While this nursing home's overall grade was not bad, it really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively minor. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. A couple minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This facility's second best area turned out to be short-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. Our short-term care scores are based on the facility's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a wide range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other forms of therapy. We were surprised to find that this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we assessed. The facility offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

One of this facility's better category grades was in the area of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of B-. We looked at the levels of nurses employed by the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of time those nurses worked with residents, in determining our grade in this area. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place surprisingly fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In fact, it scored well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.

This nursing home's least impressive category was long-term care, which is the last area we assessed. It received an abysmal F for this area. Even with a few decent grades in other categories, this grade is nevertheless of a concern so we felt obligated to point it out. Long-term care grades in this range generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids, as well as the levels of routine medical care available. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 91.489365 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which happens to be slightly lower than we anticipated but still a reasonably acceptable figure. To our surprise, this place was actually decent at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This was its best score in this category.