McAllen Transitional Care Center

We want to point out that this facility really outperformed its overall grade in the area of inspections. In fact, it received an excellent government inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our highest scores in that area with a grade of A-. Arguably the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to create an imminent risk to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

This nursing home's next best category turned out to be long-term care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of B-. In our long-term care score, we weigh the quantity of services provided by a facility, along with a few quality metrics. One of the datapoints we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccinations. Fortunately, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. This facility also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility was given its next most favorable category grade in the area of short-term care. We gave this nursing home a C in this area, which is a respectable score. In calculating these short-term care grades, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to devise a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The hope is that this does not adversely affect the quality of care. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.4 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

This facility's worst category is nursing, which is the final area we looked at. Sadly, it received a lowly F in this category. Even with multiple acceptable scores in other areas, this grade is nevertheless of a concern so we felt obligated to point it out. Nursing ratings are based in large part on quality and quantity of nursing care. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing ratings. This place fared well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.