McAllen Transitional Care Center

To pair with its favorable overall performance, we gave this facility an A- for the area of inspections. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category generally have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

This facility is also strong in the category of short-term care, where it was awarded a grade of B+. It performed more favorably than most facilities in this category. In computing our short-term care grades, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we considered in this category is the number of residents that returned home from the facility. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This facility received a favorable long-term care score as well. We gave it one of our higher grades in that area with a score of B. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 98.79518 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is much higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The final category we scored was nursing, where this nursing home received a grade of B. This facility did not turn out to have any weak grades. The nursing score consists of many data points, but the most important consideration is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some quality-based measures in this category. This place fared well in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. For example, in terms of the number of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, this facility performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided with better nursing care.