Zerbe Sisters Nursing Center

One of the reasons this place is a strong facility is that it received an impressive inspection score. Inspections is its best category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility an A+. Our inspection ratings are based on items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this category have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

This facility is also strong in the area of long-term care, where it was awarded a score of B+. It performed more favorably than most facilities in this category. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 99.66555 percent of its patients, which is significantly higher than the average nursing home. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. Nursing scores are based largely on quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The next category we looked at is short-term care, which proved to be this nursing home's worst category. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in that area. Sadly, this grade hurt the nursing home's overall grade to some degree. In determining our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize the facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other types of therapists. This category is generally a solid measure of the facility's rehabilitation. It appears that this place was below average in the two key staffing metrics we looked at. It supplied fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other nursing homes. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.6 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.