Ebony Lake Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

Ebony Lake Nursing and Rehabilitation Center is a large facility located in Brownsville, Texas. With a abysmal overall grade of F, this facility didn't fare well in our assessment. Based on our assessment, you'd be better off to avoid of this place. We would not blame you if you are ready to stop reading and find another facility. However, if you want to learn more about this nursing home's category grades, inspection grades are discussed in the next section.

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable inspection report this year. As a result, it received a decent grade in that category with a score of B-. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

We were also stunned to learn that this nursing home received a somewhat respectable long-term care grade this year. We awarded it a C in this category. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. After considering the volume of nursing care, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. Frankly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this facility vaccinated just 65.053764 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Nevertheless, this place also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 1.48 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.

We also wanted to draw your attention to this facility's poor nursing grade where it received an F. There are several subcategories included in this area. Most of these criteria are tied to staffing levels. This particular nursing home provided just 3.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This number is far below the national average. Finally, we also looked at some quality-based metrics in determining our nursing ratings. This facility was above average in two of the areas we considered, with good scores for avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. These areas are typically reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.

The last area we assessed was short-term care. Sadly, it received an F in this area, which is a bottom of the barrel grade. Our short-term care grade is generally used to judge a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. To offer quality rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to feature better levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. With its weak rating in this area, we weren't stunned to learn this place offers significantly fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other facilities. The last metric we assessed in this area is the number of patients that were able to return home from the facility. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 37 percent of its residents returning home.