Pflugerville Health Care Center

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 C. Our inspection scores account for several factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to find that none were in any of the categories labeled G through L. This means it avoided the more ominous classes of deficiencies. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.

Turning to the area of long-term care, this nursing home was given just a D in that category. Unfortunately, this proved to be one of its better grades. For prospective patients looking for a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is a very important category. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 99.337746 percent of its patients, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. To our surprise, this nursing home also keeps its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, some of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.

The next area we graded was short-term care, in which this nursing home received an F. With our short-term care category, we try to forge a valuable gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze the facility's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. With a score this poor in this category, we were not shocked to discover that this facility was below average in the two key staffing metrics we focus on. In fact, it offered substantially fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most nursing homes. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients that were able to return home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.

The next category we analyzed was nursing, where this facility received a very poor grade here as well. It received a lowly F in this category, which is obviously somewhat alarming. We assessed the licensure of nurses working for the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of hours the nurses were with patients, in determining our score in this area. This facility provided just 0.1 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. To pair with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this facility had poor scores in several of the quality-based metrics we looked at in determining our nursing scores. For starters, we looked at the percentage of patients having falls which led to major injury. This nursing home was at more than 150 percent of the national average in this statistic.