Sarah Ann Hester Memorial Home

Sarah Ann Hester Memorial Home is a small non-profit nursing home located in Benkelman, Nebraska. We gave this nursing home an overall grade of B+. A grade in this range requires solid marks in most areas. Based on our ratings, this nursing home looks like a good fit for most people. This facility is better in some categories than others, but it didn't have any bad scores in any of our major categories. More information about these categories can be found below.

To pair with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. On top of patient-friendly nursing hour statistics, this facility's vaccination record was top notch also. Indeed, it vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Lastly, we looked at its number of hospitalizations. Here we found that this facility had 2.55 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.

Adding to its impressive grades, we gave this facility a grade of A for our inspections rating. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively minor. Although this place had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B. Our nursing grade analyzes many factors, many of which are tied to nursing hours. This place provided 4.2 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is an extremely impressive statistic which typically correlates with quality care. Lastly, we also looked at nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing scores. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these datapoints as reliable indicators of the caliber of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The final category we assessed is short-term care. This facility received a strong short-term care score in our assessment, with a C. While this was not nearly as good as several of its other scores, this is still a decent rating in that area. In determining these short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to devise a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 31.1 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.