The Hills Nursing & Rehabilitation

The Hills Nursing & Rehabilitation is an average-sized nursing home located in Decatur, Texas. This nursing home received an overall grade of C, which is a solid grade. This actually turned out to be the highest rated facility in Decatur. One of the major highlights of this facility's report card is its stellar inspection score, which we will address in the next paragraph.

In addition to being a respectable nursing home overall, this facility also excelled in the category of inspections, where it received a grade of A. Few facilities performed better in this category. Our inspection grades are based on items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this category typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This place received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This indicates that the inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

In addition, we also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home was given strong long-term care marks in this assessment. We awarded them one of our better scores in this area, with a B+. This turned out to be the facility's second highest score. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly can be a dangerous ailment for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.29 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home.

This facility's next best area turned out to be its short-term care score, where it was awarded a grade of B-. In computing our short-term care scores, we scrutinize a facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This grade is often a useful assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the typical facility. The final measure we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. This was more of a strength than its staffing metrics. It performed well in this area with 60.7 percent of its patients returning home. This was a boost to its score in this category.

This facility's weakest area was nursing, which is the last area we analyzed. Unfortunately, we gave it an F in this area. In spite of multiple respectable grades in other areas, this grade is still of a concern so we would like to to make sure you are aware. Nursing ratings are heavily correlated with nurse staffing levels. With just 2.9 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis, this place's nurse staffing levels were significantly below the national average. To pair with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this facility also didn't fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in determining our nursing ratings. We looked at the percentage of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and major falls. This place had more pressure ulcers and falls than the average nursing home.