AHC Covington Care

In addition to receiving a great overall score, this nursing home also earned an A+ inspection rating. This is based on its recent government inspections. An A+ in this area is one of the highest complements we can offer a facility. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B+ for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. The nursing grade weighs a host of factors. The most important variable is the quantity of hours nurses spent with residents. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility 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 country 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 employing a protocol of turning patients more often.

This nursing home also was awarded an impressive long-term care grade. Indeed, we awarded it an above average grade of B+ in this category. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping 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.

The last category we assessed was short-term care, where this nursing home received a B+. This rounded out a very impressive profile. Few nursing homes received a B+ or better in each of our categories. In calculating our short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. This score is more often than not a solid measure of the facility's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this category is the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 5.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.