Hico Nursing and Rehabilitation

Hico Nursing and Rehabilitation is the only facility we were able to find in Hico, Texas. We awarded it an overall grade of C, which is a middle of the pack rating. Based on our assessment, this place has some redeeming qualities. One of the best aspects of this nursing home's report card is its remarkable inspection rating, which is addressed in the next paragraph.

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this facility outperformed its overall score in the category of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in this category with an A+. Inspection scores are tied to items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this area have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This means the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

This nursing home also excelled in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a score of A-. Very few facilities fared better in this category. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. Once we concluded our assessment of the amount of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 93.98496 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia can be a life or death condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Lastly, we looked at its number of hospitalizations. With 1.75 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility was just about middle of the road in this area.

In addition, we gave this nursing home an F in the area of short-term care. Short-term care ratings are based on the facility's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a wide spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other forms of therapy. With a score in this range in this area, we were not shocked to learn that this place was below average in several staffing figures we focus on. The nursing home offered far fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other facilities. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that just 37.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

The next category we rated was nursing, which ended up being this facility's weakest category. We gave it an abysmal F for this category, which is certainly a major disappointment. There are a number of subcategories within this category. Most of the factors are tied to nurse staffing. This facility offered a meager 2.6 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. On top of being below average in nursing hours per resident, this place also had poor marks in the quality-based measures we looked at in calculating our nursing ratings. We looked at the percentage of patients experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This place was at approximately 1.5 times the national average in both of these data points. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. These statistics helped pull down this nursing home's nursing rating quite a bit.