With a population of 148,766 , Waco, Texas is a moderately populated city. Surprisingly, there are only 3 nursing homes there, which is not quite as many as we expected in a city of this size. These nursing homes did not really excel from a quality perspective either. The city was given a city grade of C, which is not one of our better grades at the city level. It looks like most cities received a B or higher, leaving Waco on the wrong side of average. The best part of this city's report card was its nursing homes' remarkable inspection scores. Inspection grades are discussed in the next paragraph.
While its overall score was fairly ordinary, we awarded Waco an A- for our inspections rating. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively minor. Waco earned its next best grade in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a B-, which is also a respectable grade. In the last two categories, we gave Waco grades of B- and D for our short-term care and nursing categories respectively. Even with an otherwise respectable profile, a nursing score in this range may be an ominous sign for levels of nurse staffing.