Sterling County Nursing Home

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility also received an A+ long-term care grade. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in long-term care it is typically a good sign for resident care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours was vaccines. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a reliable method to avoid unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the nursing home population. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping 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.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home an A for inspections. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This facility was hit with 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies an immediate threat to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. While this wasn't quite as good as some of its other category grades, this isn't a bad score either. There are many factors included in this category. Most of the datapoints are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home actually excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. It performed well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

The next category we graded is short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a solid score in that area, with a B-. Although this was not on par with many of its other scores, it is still not a major area of concern. Our short-term care ratings are based on the nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This includes a vast range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. We were not able to find information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. The final datapoint we considered in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.