Covenant Living at Mount Miguel

This nursing home received a strong overall score as described above, but we especially wanted to point out its excellent government inspections in recent years. We gave it an A in this area. These inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so favorably is that it received a very impressive short-term care grade. In fact, short-term care ended up being its second most favorable category score. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of A. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we look at a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This score is often a solid measure of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The final item we looked at in this area is the number of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. This wasn't quite as good as some of its other scores, but a grade in this range is not the end of the world. Nursing grades are based largely on levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home surprisingly fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. In fact, it performed well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the number of hours of care offered.

Our final category is long-term care, where we awarded this nursing home a C in that category. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary goal is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This place also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.