Sonterra Health Center

The main reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it earned an elite inspection grade. Its inspection grade was far superior to its overall score. In our inspections category, we gave it an A-. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this category tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. This nursing home received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to create an imminent risk to resident health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

We also gave this facility a positive grade in short-term care. This facility received a grade of B+ in this area, which happens to be one of our more impressive grades. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This category is typically a reliable measure of a nursing home's rehabilitation. It does not appear that this nursing home provided information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. The final datapoint we considered in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 6.1 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This facility was given its next highest category score in the area of long-term care. We awarded this nursing home a C in this area, which is an acceptable score. In a long-term care setting, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is more than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The next area we rated is nursing, proved to be this nursing home's worst category. We awarded this nursing home a D in that category. This really was one of just a few weak points on a strong report card. The nursing score includes a host of factors. The most heavily weighted variable is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This nursing home provided a meager 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This statistic is far below average. To pair with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this facility also didn't fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of patients experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This facility had more pressure ulcers and falls than the average facility. This may be a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. These scores pulled down this nursing home's nursing grade quite a bit.