Austin Wellness and Rehabilitation

It should be noted that this nursing home's inspection score outpaced its overall grade. In fact, we gave it a B for its inspections rating, which is a very solid score. Inspection grades are based on datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this category have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This facility was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This means that CMS didn't consider any of these deficiencies to create an immediate risk to patient safety or health. A couple of minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This nursing home was awarded its next highest category grade in the area of short-term care. We awarded this facility a grade of B- in this area, which is an acceptable grade. Our short-term care grades are likely more important for residents needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the average facility. The last statistic we considered in this category is the percentage of residents that returned home from the facility. We found that just 5.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

The next category we assessed is long-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a solid grade of C. In a long-term care setting, the primary goal is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination records. We were optimistic to find that this nursing home vaccinates 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. This place was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The next area we assessed was nursing. We gave it a grade of C in that area. This is not a bad grade in this area. Our nursing rating is based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We consider both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This place provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a low total compared to most facilities. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures. Although this facility got docked a bit for nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of these quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this subcategory. This can be a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving residents at least once a day.