Heartland of San Antonio

The main reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it received an excellent inspection score. Its inspection grade was far superior to its overall score. In our inspections category, we gave it an A. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Surprisingly, this facility received a category L deficiency, which is unexpected based on its inspection grade. These are the worst type of deficiencies. This category of deficiency means the government inspectors identified a widespread deficiency putting resident health or safety in imminent danger. Any serious deficiency is a major concern. While other aspects of this nursing home's inspection report were favorable, we have some reservations.

We also awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of short-term care, where it received a grade of B-. In determining these short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to create a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. We found that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. In fact, it supplied fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The last statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 5.6 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.

Unfortunately, this facility's next best score is long-term care. As it turns out, with a D in this category, it still performed relatively badly. For prospective patients seeking a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is a very important category. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.

Moving on to our next category, this nursing home really didn't fare well. With a rock bottom grade of F in nursing, this is this nursing home's weakest area. In determining our nursing grades, we look at both staffing levels and the training levels of the nurses. This nursing home provided a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is well below average. To pair with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this place also did not perform as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in calculating our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents experiencing major falls and pressure ulcers. This nursing home had more pressure ulcers and falls than the average nursing home. This could be a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, these metrics hurt this nursing home's nursing rating quite a bit.