Juniper Village at Lincoln Heights

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home received a first-rate nursing score. We gave it a grade of A in that category. Our nursing grade is mostly based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home Texas in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning residents more frequently.

Among its many high-end scores, this facility received a strong short-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a score of A in that category. Our short-term care scores are probably most critical for those in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires more highly-skilled nursing. This means not only nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this area is the number of residents that ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This facility earned a B for its inspections grade. This is an above average score in this category. Inspection grades are based on several pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this area typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few minor dings are not necessarily something to panic about.

The last area we looked at was long-term care, in which this facility was awarded a B. Believe it or not, this was this facility's least impressive category. A facility is doing something right when their lowest score still outperforms most other facilities. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care tend to provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is too frequently a dangerous health condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.