The Covington Care Center

To pair with its strong overall grade, we gave this facility an A+ for its short-term care rating. In computing our short-term care scores, we size up the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This category is considered to be a reliable assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation. Fortunately, this nursing home offers both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities offer both. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.8 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Our nursing score is mostly associated with the nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.7 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 place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning our next area, we gave this nursing home a grade of A for its long-term care score. This is a very strong rating. Facilities that receive this type of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are well cared for. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We weren't able to track down information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In addition, this nursing home also received a nearly flawless inspection report. As a result, it earned one of our highest grades in that category with an A. With this impressive grade, this place is one of the few nursing homes in California to receive straight A's. Our inspection grades weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this area generally have few severe deficiencies. While this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.