William R Courtney Texas State Veterans Home

To pair with a strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home an A+ for our inspection category. Our inspection ratings weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this category usually have few severe 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home was given impressive scores in the category of long-term care as well. As a result, we awarded it one of our most elite scores in that area with a score of A-. Facilities that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are well cared for. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 81.818184 percent of its residents, which is somewhat lower than we anticipated. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. We assessed the licensure of nurses at the facility, in addition to the quantity of hours the nurses spent with residents, in computing our score in this category. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The last category we rated was short-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a decent grade of C. This was this facility's weakest category. Our short-term care grades are considered to be most critical for folks requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more skilled nursing services. This includes not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. It does not look like this nursing home provided information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.