Ballwin Ridge Health & Rehabilitation

Although we gave this facility a poor overall score, we gave it a B+ for our inspections rating. This is due to the nursing home receiving a decent inspection report this year. Our inspection grades are based on many datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are an important thing to look for on these reports. Most importantly, you should avoid facilities that have severe deficiencies linked to endangerment of patients. While this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing score. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this nursing home a grade of D. Our nursing rating is based on many subcategories. The most heavily weighted one is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. With only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, this facility's nurse staffing levels were far below the national average. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing grades. This facility performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

This facility ended up receiving a rock-bottom score in our short-term care area. It received a lowly F in this category. Our short-term care grades are vital for residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires additional skilled nursing services. This includes a wide range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Considering its grade in this category, we were not stunned to learn that this nursing home is well below average in terms of its quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours offered to its residents based on the metrics we assessed. Honestly, this was what we expected to find. Lastly, we considered 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 3.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, around half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.

The final category we analyzed is long-term care, in which this facility received a poor score here also. Unfortunately, we gave it an F for this category, which is definitely a major disappointment. When facilities receive a score in this range in this category it typically means the facility didn't perform well in our measures relating to patient care. Once we finished looking at the volume of nursing care, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. We were a bit alarmed this facility vaccinated only 54.6875 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than most nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.