Sterling Place

While we graded this nursing home extremely poorly overall, it earned a better long-term care grade this year. We gave it a B- in that category. Our long-term care scores are based in part on a facility's volume of care. This means a vast range of personal care services, ranging from help with activities of daily living to routine healthcare services. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is better than most nursing homes. Finally, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to the area of nursing care, this facility received a grade of just D in this category. Unfortunately, this ended up being one of its better grades. Our nursing rating looks at the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of training of the nurses and the amount of time spent with residents. With just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident each day, this facility's nurse staffing levels were far below the national average. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing scores. This facility performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these datapoints to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This nursing home received a grade of just D in the area of inspections. Inspection scores factor in many items on the facility's recent inspection reports. When you see too many deficiencies on the reports, this is generally the worst sign. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to patient safety. This particular nursing home had 2 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only positive thing we can say is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they posed a threat to resident health or safety. Lastly, we also would like to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home was assessed significant government fines recently of over $100,000. This generally indicates that a facility's bad performance has been an issue for several years.

The final category we graded was short-term care. This nursing home received an abysmal grade of F in that category. In our short-term care rating, we attempt to craft a sound measure for rehabilitation. In this process, we look at the nursing home's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Not surprisingly, we discovered that this place offers far less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than the average nursing home. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This definitely was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 4.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. At most facilities, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.