Zion of Alamo Heights

While this place's overall grade was terrible, it actually fared well in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a B+ for that category, which is one of our better scores. These inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

Turning to the area of short-term care, this facility was given just a D in that category. As it turns out, this ended up being one of its better features. Our short-term care scores are based on the nursing home's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a broad scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. With a score in this range in this area, we were not shocked to learn that this nursing home was well below average in two of the key staffing figures we focus on. The facility provided significantly fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other nursing homes. The last statistic we considered in this category is the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 0 percent of its patients returning home.

We also wanted to point out that this nursing home received an F for its nursing grade. Our nursing score assesses the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. With only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily, this facility's nurse staffing levels were significantly below average. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home fared well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these metrics to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The next category we looked at is long-term care. This facility received a rock bottom grade of F in that area. For prospective residents seeking a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. One of the factors we considered after nursing hours was vaccines. Fortunately, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Sadly, some of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.