Bluebonnet Point Wellness

On top of 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+. Our inspection grades account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this category tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. We weren't able to track down deficiency data for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Additionally, this facility also was given favorable long-term care scores this year. Indeed, we gave them one of our stronger grades in that category, with a score of B+. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. One of the datapoints we considered after nursing hours is vaccinations. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This is a proven method to avoid negative health outcomes for the senior population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of C. This facility didn't perform quite as well in this category as it did in some other categories. Nevertheless, this is still a respectable score. The nursing grade includes numerous datapoints. The most heavily weighted variable is the amount of time nurses spent with residents. This facility provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this place performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is usually a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place.

The next area we assessed is short-term care. We awarded this facility a C in that category. Our short-term care ratings are presumably most important for people requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this category is the number of patients that returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.7 percent of this facility's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.