The Covington Care Center

In addition to being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home also excelled in our short-term care category, where it earned an A. Few facilities performed better in this category. In computing our short-term care scores, we assess the facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This area is typically a meaningful measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, this nursing home offers both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities offer both. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Compounding its high-end accomplishments in other areas, we gave this facility a grade of A for its long-term care grade. In a long-term care setting, the primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. This facility is head and heels above most nursing homes in this category.

This facility has received near flawless government inspections in recent years. We gave them an A in this area. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the last category we analyzed, this facility received an impressive grade grade of A- in our nursing category. With this grade, the facility completed a straight A profile. When determining our nursing scores, we weigh both nursing hours and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home averages 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home 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 many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.