Continuing Care at Wind Crest

In addition to earning a great overall score, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with an A. The nursing grade considers several subcategories. The most important factor is the number of hours nurses spent with residents. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Colorado in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning a patient even once per day.

Contributing to its high-end resume, this facility also performed well in our long-term care category. In fact, we gave it a grade of A for that category. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure patients are well cared for. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 98.42519 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is too frequently a life or death condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave this to chance. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Contributing to its first-rate resume, this nursing home also received a superb short-term care grade, with a grade of A. In the category of short-term care, we attempt to assess indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to return home from the facility. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we gave this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. With this score, the facility completes its straight A report card. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. 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.