Sarah Ann Hester Memorial Home

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this facility also performed well in the area of long-term care, where it earned an A+. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in this category it is a good sign for patient care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. One of the factors we considered after nursing hours was vaccines. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a proven method to minimize unnecessary hospitalizations for the senior population. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Nursing ratings are mostly based on a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Another impressive feature of this facility is its inspection grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our inspection ratings are tied to several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This facility was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In our final category, this facility also was awarded a very strong short-term care score, with an A-. This completed a straight A report card. Our short-term care grade is typically used to measure a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. In order to have quality rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to provide better levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.