Desoto Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

In addition to 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 scores weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this area generally have few of these severe deficiencies. This place was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

Another one of this facility's quality category scores came in the area of long-term care. We gave them one of our more favorable grades in that area, with a score of B. Facilities that do well in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 98.4375 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Our nursing rating is based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We consider both the levels of skill of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 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 many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of moving patients more frequently.

Our next category is short-term care, where we awarded this facility a C in this area. In computing our short-term care grades, we scrutinize the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This rating is typically a meaningful measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. The final datapoint we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.