Tulia Health and Rehabilitation Center

In addition to earning a strong overall score, this nursing home also received an elite short-term care grade. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with an A-. Our short-term care ratings are vital for people seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing services. This means a wide scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

This facility also excelled in inspections. We awarded it an A- for that area. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with better grades in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This nursing home was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies an imminent risk to patient health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. In calculating a facility's nursing score, we assess the amount of time nurses are with residents as well as the level of licensure of the nurses. This particular nursing home 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 facility 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 avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we assessed was long-term care, which was this facility's worst area. We awarded this facility a grade of D in that area. Unfortunately, this category pulled down the facility's overall profile a bit. For residents looking for a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care is an important category. After we finished looking at the volume of nursing care, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. We were pleased to find that this nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. To our surprise, this facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.