Sterling Suites Healthcare and Rehabilitation

This nursing home received a strong overall score as described above, but we want to note its excellent short-term care score. We awarded them an A in this area. In our short-term care score, we try to create a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation. In doing so, we look at a facility's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Adding to its impressive grades, we gave this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This nursing home was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to resident health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. The nursing grade consists of a handful of components, however, the main one is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning to the fourth area, we gave this facility a grade of D in our long-term care category. This was the facility's weakest category grade. Of course, this grade hurt the facility's overall profile a bit. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means the nursing home did not perform well in our measures relating to resident care. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. Unfortunately, we were not able to find information on vaccination rates. Surprisingly, this place actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.