Sterling Village

In addition to being a top notch facility overall, this place also excelled in inspections, where it received a grade of A. Few facilities performed better in this category. Inspection scores account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this category generally have very few severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this nursing home was given a strong score of A- in our short-term care category. In the area of short-term care, we try to evaluate measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents that who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

Turning our next area, we gave this facility a grade of A- for our long-term care rating. This is a dominant rating. Facilities that do well in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. Once we finished looking at the amount of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 98.61432 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia tragically can be a life threatening condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Moving on to the last category, this facility also performed well in our nursing category. We gave it a grade of B+ in this category. This completed a very strong report card. Nursing grades are based in large part on quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning patients more often.