Continuing Care at Wind Crest

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility received an excellent long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. Once we assessed the amount of nursing care, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a life or death health condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility does not take any chances. 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 figure.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. Nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this nursing home an A. The nursing grade includes a number of subcategories. The most important one is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures 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 nursing home Colorado in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning patients more frequently.

This facility has earned near flawless inspections in recent years. We gave them an A in this area. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area typically dodged the more 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.

In the final area, we awarded this facility a grade of A for our short-term care score. This rounded out a very impressive profile. In determining our short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This score is typically a solid assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.