With a population of 25,461 people, Athens, Tennessee is a small city. There are just 2 nursing homes in the city, which doesn't provide you with too many choices. This place's nursing homes received a top-notch city grade of A-, so what this city lacks in quantity, it makes up for by having high quality nursing homes. In fact, this city's city grade was even better than the city grade of facilities in the nearby city of Chattanooga. This is especially impressive in light of the fact that we gave those facilities in Chattanooga a city grade of B, which is actually a good grade in its own right. The best aspect of Athens's strong profile is its nursing homes' inspection scores. Inspection reports are discussed in the next paragraph
In addition to performing well in its overall grade, the nursing homes in Athens performed spectacularly well in the area of inspections. In fact, some of its facilities received virtually perfect inspection reports this year. As a result, we awarded it one of our highest scores in that category with a grade of A+. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. The city also performed spectacularly well in the area of short-term care, where it received an A for this category. In the last two categories, the city earned slightly below average grades for our long-term care and nursing categories.