Schleicher County Medical Center

With an address in Eldorado, Texas, Schleicher County Medical Center is the only option we identified in the area. With an A- overall grade, we ranked this nursing home in the top third of all nursing homes in the country. We couldn't find many bad things to say about this place. Its ratings are just impeccable. The best aspect of this facility's impressive profile is its inspection grade. Inspection grades are discussed in the next paragraph

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility has received nearly flawless health inspections in recent years. We gave them an A in this area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively minor. While this place had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

On the list of its many elite grades, this nursing home was given a top-shelf long-term care score. In fact, it received a grade of A in this category. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. Once we finished looking at the amount of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 95.3271 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is too frequently a life threatening condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. This place also keeps its residents out of the hospital. It had just 1.08 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a significantly better hospitalization rate than most nursing homes.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. In computing a nursing home's nursing score, we assess the number of hours nurses commit to residents as well as the level of skill of those nurses. This place provides an incredible 4.1 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is far better than what is offered by most places. Lastly, this place also performed well in several of the quality-based metrics we assessed. By way of illustration, in terms of the number of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, this facility performed better than the national average. This is often an indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided with better nursing care and having a policy of regularly turning residents to avoid bed sores.

The next area we scored is short-term care, where this nursing home received a B-. Even though this is its worst category rating, this is still not a bad grade. Short-term care grades are critical for patients looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well below average.