Gulf Pointe Plaza

Gulf Pointe Plaza is an average-sized nursing home located in Rockport, Texas. This is a well below average facility, with an overall grade of D. If you are not happy with this facility's poor overall grade, you may find your options to be limited in Rockport. The city has just one other nursing home. If you aren't deterred by this nursing home's report card, feel free to continue reading to find out about its category grades. Inspection reports are discussed in the next paragraph.

Although we did not rate this facility highly overall, we want to point out its nearly flawless government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A- in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are quite insignificant. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even with this deficiency, this place still had a relatively favorable report.

This facility's long-term care rating appears to be one of its more favorable scores. The facility was awarded a grade of C in this area. Our long-term care grades are more critical for people in need of more traditional services related to personal care. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is more than the vast majority of nursing homes. This place was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 1.31 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.

The third category we analyzed was short-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a solid grade of C. In computing our short-term care scores, we size up the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. This score is more often than not a useful measure of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than the average facility. The hope is always that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. The final metric we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. It performed much better in this metric. We found that it was above average in this area with 53.4 percent of its residents returning home.

The final category we graded is nursing. This facility received a very poor grade of F in that category. Our nursing score focuses on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We consider both the levels of training of those nurses and the number of hours spent with residents. This place averaged a meager 3.2 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This figure is far below average. To go along with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this place also didn't fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing scores. We looked at the percentage of patients experiencing major falls and pressure ulcers. This facility had more pressure ulcers and falls than the average nursing home. This may be a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. These scores pulled down this facility's nursing rating significantly.