Senior Care of Onion Creek

Senior Care of Onion Creek is located in Austin, Texas, which has more than 25 nursing homes. We awarded this nursing home an overall grade of C. A grade of this caliber requires some solid scores. As far as we can see, this facility is a good fit for quite a few people. The best part of this facility's report card is its exemplary inspection grade. Inspection grades are discussed in the next paragraph.

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it earned an elite inspection score. Its inspection score was far superior to its overall grade. In our inspections category, we gave this facility an A. Our inspection grades are tied to pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

Additionally, we also wanted to note that this nursing home was given impressive long-term care marks in this assessment. We awarded them one of our more favorable scores in that area, with a grade of B+. This proved to be the facility's second best grade. For prospective residents looking for a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are an important measure. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 88.95349 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which happens to be a few points less than we expected but still a reasonably acceptable figure. Finally, we looked at the nursing home's number of hospitalizations. We found that this facility had 2.37 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days.

We also awarded this nursing home a middle of the road score in the area of short-term care, where it received a grade of C. Our short-term care scores are believed to be more meaningful for individuals needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, this place was below average in terms of its number of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. The important question is whether this also affected quality of care. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. This proved to be a stronger area than its staffing metrics. This place fared well in this area with 59.9 percent of its residents returning home. This was a big boost to its score in this area.

Turning to our fourth area, this facility didn't fare very well. Due to a poor grade of F in nursing, this was this nursing home's worst grade. Nursing ratings are based in large part on nurse staffing levels. This facility provided just 3.1 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. To pair with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this place also did not fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in determining our nursing grades. We looked at the percent of patients experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This nursing home had more pressure ulcers and falls than the average nursing home.