Brookshire Nursing Center

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home really outperformed its overall grade in the category of inspections. In fact, it received an excellent inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our best grades in that area with an A. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

In addition, we also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received positive short-term care marks in this assessment. We awarded them one of our more impressive scores in that category, with a grade of B. This turned out to be the facility's second highest grade. Short-term care grades are typically used to gauge a facility's rehabilitation services. In order to have high-end rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have better levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to return home from the facility. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-, which is a decent grade. Our nursing grade focuses on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of licensure of the nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This place provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is a somewhat uninspiring figure as it is well below the national average. Finally, nursing scores also consider quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this facility performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often an indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses to assist its residents.

Switching gears to the fourth category, we gave this facility a D for our long-term care category. This was the facility's weakest category score. Naturally, this grade pulled down the facility's overall grade a bit. If you are seeking services other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care ratings. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Fortunately, this nursing home provided the vaccine to 95.918365 percent of its patients, which is a very respectable figure. Surprisingly, this facility also fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.