Medilodge of Sterling

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with higher scores in this area most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received an A+ nursing grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+ category grades. There are numerous criteria within this grade. Most of these criteria reflect the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning the page to our third category, this facility received an excellent long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure patients are well cared for. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 96.190475 percent of its patients, which is more than the average nursing home. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning to our final category, this nursing home was awarded a high-end short-term care grade. We gave it an A in that category, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. Our short-term care grade is generally used to judge a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To provide highly rated rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to offer higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other types of therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this area is the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.