Alfredo Gonzalez Texas State Veterans Home

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

This facility was given an impressive long-term care grade as well. We gave it one of our higher scores in that category with a grade of B. Facilities that receive this type of grade in this category typically provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure patients are kept in good health. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 93.71816 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is somewhat lower than we expected but still a respectable percentage. 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 only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

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. The nursing rating analyzes many components, most of which are tied to quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The last area we graded was short-term care. We gave this facility a C in this category. Short-term care ratings are based in part on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This includes a vast scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. We weren't able to locate information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The final statistic we considered in this category is the percentage of residents that ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.