Shoal Creek Rehabilitation Center

This facility really excelled in our short-term care rating. We gave it an A for that category, which is one of our best grades. This boosted its overall profile. Our short-term care scores are probably most meaningful for patients needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we considered in this category is the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Additionally, we also would like to point out that this nursing home was given impressive long-term care marks this year. We awarded them one of our better scores in that category, with a B. This turned out to be the facility's second highest score. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care tend to provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home also received a strong grade in our nursing category. We awarded this nursing home an above average grade of B in this area. Our nursing category weighs quite a few factors, most of which are tied to quantities of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Moving on our last category of inspections, we gave this nursing home a D. This turned out to be this facility's worst grade and it really hurt its overall grade. Our inspection rating is based on the facility's inspection reports. Since the information is collected by government inspectors, we weight it heavily in overall grade. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. We suggest you pay close attention to the severity of those deficiencies. This facility had a deficiency by CMS. Fortunately, it wasn't in a category that suggests that it created a threat to patient safety or health. Finally, we also need to point out that this facility was assessed large government fines in recent years amounting to more than $100,000. This often signifies that a facility's poor performance has been an issue for several years.