Brushy Creek Post Acute Care

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite minor. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor dings are not the end of the world.

Adding to its high-end assessment, this nursing home also was given a superb short-term care grade, with a score of A. Our short-term care ratings are thought to be most meaningful for patients needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional skilled nursing. This means not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Turning to another strength for this facility, we awarded them one of our better scores in our long-term care category as well, with a grade of B. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 98.99497 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia can be a life threatening ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The final area we analyzed was nursing. This facility received a strong nursing rating in our assessment, with a grade of B. While this was not quite as elite as many of its other category grades, this remains one of our more impressive grades for this category. Our nursing score consists of many subcategories, most of which are associated with quantities of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.