Covington's Convalescent Center

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Inspection scores are tied to many items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this area typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was awarded a top-shelf long-term care score. In fact, this turned out to be this nursing home's second strongest category score. In that area, this facility received a grade of A-. For patients seeking a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is an important category. After assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 93.1677 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which happens to be somewhat below what we anticipated but still a decent figure. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home received an impressive short-term care score as well. We awarded it one of our higher scores in that area with a grade of B+. In computing these short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to formulate a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

Moving on to the next category, this nursing home was given a strong nursing score. Although this isn't nearly as good as many of its other category grades, this remains one of our more favorable grades we offer. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with nurse staffing levels. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.