Sterling Care at South Mountain

To pair with its relatively modest overall grade, we gave this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. This score is far better than the facility's overall grade. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some are relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple of minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

One of this nursing home's more respectable category scores came in the area of short-term care. This turned out to be its second most favorable category. In that category, we gave this facility a C. Our short-term care grade is typically used to measure a facility's rehabilitation services. To have highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must provide better levels of highly skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other types of therapists. We were surprised to find that this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. In fact, it provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. It is still important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. The final item we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that just 5 percent of this facility's residents returned home. This figure was below average.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of C. Our nursing rating is based on many datapoints. The most heavily weighted factor is the amount of time nurses spent with patients. This place provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared with most other facilities. Finally, our nursing grades also consider quality-based measures, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this place performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often a reliable indicator that a place has quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

Turning to the last area, this facility was given a C for long-term care, which is an acceptable rating. If you are seeking services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care grades. After we finished assessing the amount of care provided by nurses, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 93.766235 percent of its residents for pneumonia. On a more positive note, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.