Sterling Transitional Suites

Sterling Transitional Suites is a small facility in Zanesville, Ohio. With an overall score of A-, this nursing home is ranked among the more impressive nursing homes we looked at. Not surprisingly, this turned out to be radically superior to many of the facilities in Zanesville. The best part of this nursing home's impressive profile was its short-term care grade. We discuss short-term care in the next paragraph

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ short-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to qualify measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess a facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. This facility excelled at the highest level in the two key staffing areas we looked at. It offered about 50% more care from physical therapists and registered nurses than the average nursing home. This is an excellent sign. The last datapoint we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that it performed as well as just about any facility in Ohio in this area with 67.8 percent of its patients returning home. With most nursing homes, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In that area, we gave this facility an A. The nursing category analyzes many datapoints, most of which are associated with nursing hours. This facility provided 4.9 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This was one of the more impressive totals we found. Furthermore, a significant percentage of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are highly skilled nurses. In addition to offering impressive levels of nursing care, this place also excelled in the quality measures we looked at. By way of illustration, it performed as well as any nursing home in Ohio in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these statistics as good indicators of the caliber of nursing care provided.

Another impressive feature of this facility is its inspection grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. Our inspection scores are tied to many items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this place had a few deficiencies on its report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A couple relatively minor dings aren't something to panic about.

The final area we looked at is nursing, is this nursing home's weakest area. We awarded this facility a grade of D in that area. This was one of the couple of dings in a very solid report card. Long-term care grades assess a nursing home's personal care instead of the highly skilled therapy and medical services that are critical to a rehabilitation facility. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We weren't able to track down this facility's vaccination rates. To our surprise, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best score in this category.