The Landing at Watermere

We want to point out that this nursing home really outperformed its overall score in the area of inspections. In fact, it received an excellent inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our highest scores in this area with an A. Our inspection ratings weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this area usually have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another one of this facility's more favorable category scores was in the category of long-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B+. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 97.5 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Another one of this nursing home's better category scores was in the area of short-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a B. In computing our short-term care ratings, we look at a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other types of therapists. This score is generally a useful assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. The last statistic we looked at in this area is the number of residents that returned home from the facility. It fared as well as just about any nursing home in Texas in this area with 65 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, at most nursing homes, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

The next area we rated is nursing, which ended up being this nursing home's least impressive area. We gave it a lowly F in this category, which is obviously very disappointing. Nursing scores are based largely on quantity of nursing care available. This place averaged just 3.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. In addition to receiving below average marks for total nursing hours, this place was a bit less impressive in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in calculating our nursing scores. We looked at the percent of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and found that this place was at roughly 150 percent of the national average in this statistic. This is a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. This statistic pulled down this facility's nursing score substantially.