Alpine Terrace

Alpine Terrace is located in Kerrville, Texas. This city has a total of 37,620 people. We gave it an overall grade of C, which is a middle of the road score. This grade is not too far off the city grade for Kerrville, which is a B-. This facility did not meet our expectations in every category we looked at, but it did not receive any rock-bottom grades either. More information about its category grades can be found below.

The primary reason this nursing home received a decent overall grade is its impeccable government inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our higher scores in that area, with an A-. This is a much better grade than the facility's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. Our inspection scores are tied to several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this area have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This facilities next best area was long-term care. We awarded it a B- in this area. This is essentially a middle of the road grade in this category. Long-term care grades are commonly used to judge a nursing home's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing more on the skilled nursing services offered by a skilled nursing facility. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is higher than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.38 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than the average nursing home.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of B-. We looked at the skill-level of nurses at the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of time those nurses worked with residents, in calculating our score in this area. Based on the CMS data, this nursing home offers 3.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in some quality-focused statistics. Specifically, we look at the percent of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these metrics as reliable measures of the quality of nursing care, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

Turning to our final category, we awarded this nursing home a D for the area of short-term care. This is the facility's least impressive category score. In computing our short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This rating is generally a useful measure of the facility's rehabilitation services. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that just 34.8 percent of this facility's patients returned home.