Richard A. Anderson (State of Texas Veterans Land

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Our inspection grades are tied to several datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. It doesn't look like we were able to find deficiency data for this nursing home. Without having access to the information regarding deficiencies for this nursing home, it was a challenge to really evaluate it in the area of inspections.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Our nursing grade is primarily associated with the facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning residents at least once a day.

Additionally, this facility also was awarded favorable short-term care grades this year. In fact, we gave them one of our more favorable scores in that category, with a score of B+. In our short-term care assessment, we try to forge a fair barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze a facility's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The last area we scored was long-term care, where we gave it an above average grade of B. This facility really doesn't have any weak links. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. After considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 92.134834 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is somewhat less than we expected but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.