Merkel Nursing Center

Merkel Nursing Center is the sole option we identified in Merkel, Texas. We awarded it an overall grade of B-, which is a middle of the pack rating. In our view, this facility looks like a solid choice for most people. More information on this nursing home's category grades is available below. Its best category was long-term care, which is addressed in the next section.

This place really excelled in the category of long-term care, where it received an impressive grade of A+. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. One of the criteria we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. This is a reliable method to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the senior population. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 1.5 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes.

Inspections is another area where this nursing home excelled. In fact, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections category. Our inspection grades account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this area tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors did not 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 an excellent sign.

Another strength of this nursing home is its favorable grade in nursing. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with an D. The nursing rating includes quite a few factors, however, the paramount one is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility provided a meager 3 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. On top of its weak nursing hours, this facility also received suboptimal marks in some of the quality-based metrics we considered in computing our nursing ratings. We found that more of this nursing home's patients sustained falls leading to major injury. We would argue that many falls could likely be prevented with better nursing care. This statistic contributed to this place receiving a poor nursing rating.

This facility's weakest category is short-term care, which is the final category we looked at. For this area, we gave this facility a D. Our short-term care grades are meaningful for prospective residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a vast spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The final item we considered in this area is the number of patients who returned home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area, with just 32.2 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, this was well below the national average.