Hickory Falls Health and Rehabilitation

The primary reason this facility received a decent overall score is its impeccable government inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our better grades in that area, with a grade of A. This is a much better score than the facility's overall grade, which was decent but not in the elite range. Our inspection ratings account for several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this category usually have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through 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 safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another strength of this facility is its superb score in long-term care. We gave them one of our more favorable scores in that area, with a score of A-. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. One of the criteria we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccinations. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a proven method to minimize unnecessary deaths for the elderly population. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility's short-term care score is one of its poorest scores. Unfortunately, the facility was awarded an F in this area. Our short-term care ratings are believed to be more critical for patients requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provided less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This definitely was not a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 4.7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. At most facilities, around half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.

The final area we rated was nursing. It received a lowly F for this category, which is a bottom of the barrel score. This is certainly a significant disappointment. Our nursing grade looks at the facility's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of licensure of the nurses and the quantity of hours spent with residents. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. This facility fared well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these metrics to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care.