The Heights of North Houston

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable inspection report this year. As a result, it received a decent grade in that category with a score of B-. Inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. Not having any deficiencies is this place's greatest strength.

This facility's next best category is long-term care, but it still received a grade of just D in that area. This turns out to be a relatively poor grade. For residents seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is a very important category. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Thankfully, this facility administered the vaccine to 99.02597 percent of its patients, which is a very solid total. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.04 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home had less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Sadly, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.

Among this nursing home's several poor grades was its F in the area of nursing care. We scrutinized the qualifications of nurses working for the facility, in addition to the quantity of time those nurses spent with patients, in computing our grade in this area. This facility offered just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing ratings. This facility fared well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning to the fourth area, this facility didn't perform well here either. With a rock bottom grade of F in short-term care, this is really as terrible as it gets. In determining these short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to devise a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Given its weak rating in this category, we weren't surprised to discover that this facility provides far fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. The final measure we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar metrics was damning for this nursing home's short-term care score.