Ambrosio Guillen Texas State Veterans Home

In addition to receiving a great overall score, this nursing home also received top notch inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our better scores in this category, with an A-. Our inspection grades are tied to several datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing score. In that category, we gave this facility an A-. When calculating a facility's nursing grade, we assess the number of hours nurses are with patients as well as the level of skill of those nurses. This nursing home provides 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 nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Additionally, this facility also was awarded favorable long-term care scores in our assessment. Indeed, we awarded them one of our higher scores in that area, with a grade of B. In a long-term care environment, the primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 93.36824 percent of its patients, which is somewhat below what we were hoping for. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The last area we analyzed was short-term care. In this category, we awarded this facility a solid grade of B-. This ended up being this facility's worst category. In the category of short-term care, we endeavor to evaluate indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We look at a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this facility submitted information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. The final item we considered in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.