Life Care Center of Hixson

In addition to being a strong nursing home overall, it also earned A+ government inspections in recent years. Its inspections are nearly flawless. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This facility was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

On the list of its many impressive scores, this facility was awarded an excellent short-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in this area. In forming these short-term care grades, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to create a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B+ for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. We analyzed the qualifications of nurses working for the facility, as well as the quantity of hours those nurses worked with patients, in calculating our score in this area. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning a resident more frequently.

The final category we scored was long-term care, where this facility was awarded a grade of C. While this wound up being its least impressive category grade, this is still not a major area of concern. For patients in need of a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are a key measure. One of the statistics we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccines. Fortunately, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Finally, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.