Irving Nursing and Rehabilitation

The primary reason this nursing home received a decent overall grade is its impeccable health inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our higher scores in that area, with an A+. This is a much better score than the facility's overall grade, which was decent but not in the elite range. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another strength of this facility is its first-rate grade in long-term care. We awarded it one of our best scores in that area, with a grade of A-. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. Once we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly can be a life threatening illness for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home does not leave this to chance. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility's second least favorable score was short-term care, where it earned a grade of just D in that category. This is a relatively poor score. Short-term care ratings are meaningful for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a wide spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we learned that this facility offers fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other nursing homes. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This was not a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, around half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.

This facility's weakest area was nursing, which is the last area we analyzed. Sadly, it received an F in this category. Despite multiple decent scores in other areas, this grade is still disappointing so we felt obligated to point it out. Nursing ratings are tied to nurse staffing levels. With just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily, this nursing home's nurse staffing levels were significantly below the national average. Lastly, we also looked at a few quality measures in determining our nursing scores. This nursing home was above average in two of the major statistics we focus on, with solid marks for avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls.