The Villages of Dallas

We would like to point out that this nursing home's inspection rating exceeded its overall score. This facility earned a B+ in this area, which is one of our better grades. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

This nursing home also was given a strong score in our long-term care category. We awarded this facility a better than average grade of B in that category. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. One of the datapoints we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. This is a proven method to avoid unnecessary deaths for the aged 65 and up population. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The next category we looked at is short-term care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of B-. In crafting our short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home'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 barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Unfortunately, it does not look like this nursing home submitted information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. The last metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 5.4 percent of this facility's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.

The next category we looked at is nursing. We gave this facility a C in that category. In determining our nursing scores, we analyze both nursing hours and the skill levels of the nurses. This place averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, which is not an impressive total. Although this place didn't really impress in terms of the quantity of nursing care available, it performed admirably in some of our quality-based metrics. In fact, it was above average in two of the metrics we look at, with good scores for minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. These data points are reliable measures of the quality of nursing care available since many falls and bed sores are preventable.