Covenant Towers Healthcare Center

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ short-term care grade. Short-term care grades are vital for residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a vast spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 8.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing grade. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of A. We scrutinized the skill-level of nurses working for the facility, as well as the number of hours those nurses spent with residents, in calculating our score in this area. This facility provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning a patient more often.

We also would like to alert you to the fact that this nursing home received a first-rate score of A in our long-term care category. When facilities receive this type of grade in this category it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. One of the statistics we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccines. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. This is a proven method to avoid negative health outcomes for the senior population. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A. This finished off a straight A report card for this nursing home. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively insignificant. We weren't able to track down deficiency data for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.