Brazos Valley Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

One of the reasons this place is a strong facility is that it received a very impressive inspection rating. In fact, inspections is its best category grade. In that category, we gave it an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively minor. This facility was hit with 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to create an immediate risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility was given strong scores in the area of long-term care as well. As a result, it received one of our strongest scores in that category with a score of A-. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in this category it is typically a good sign for resident care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. One of the factors we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. This is a great way to avoid unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the senior population. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-. This facility didn't perform quite as well in this category as it did in some other categories. Nevertheless, this is still a respectable score. Nursing ratings are mostly associated with a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This figure is significantly below the national average. Lastly, nursing ratings also consider quality-based measures, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this place performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is typically a reliable indicator that a place has quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

The final area we rated is short-term care, turned out to be this nursing home's worst area. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in this area. This was one of the couple of weak links in a strong profile. Our short-term care grade is typically used to assess a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to have high-end rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. In this place's case, we found that it provides fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than a typical facility. The last datapoint we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 0 percent of its residents returning home.