Onpointe Transitional Care at Texas Health Arlingt

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this category tend to have very few severe deficiencies. While this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received a top-shelf short-term care grade. Indeed, this turned out to be this facility's second most impressive category score. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of A. In determining our short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to formulate a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this category is the number of residents who eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 7.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

We also would like to point out the fact that this nursing home was awarded a dominant score of A in our long-term care area. If you are looking for services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care grades. On top of considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We were not able to track down this facility's vaccination rates. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Switching gears to our last category, this facility received a high-end nursing grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B+ in that category, finishing off one of our more impressive report cards. Nursing grades are based in large part on nurse staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.