Chaffee Nursing Center

In addition to being an elite facility overall, this facility also performed well in the area of inspections, where it earned an A+. Very few places performed this well in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be quite minor. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A. Our nursing grade weighs many datapoints. The most heavily weighted factor is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place 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 Missouri in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning residents more often.

Moving on our next area, this facility received an excellent long-term care score. In fact, it received a grade of A in this category. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in long-term care it is typically a good sign for patient care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 99.48718 percent of its patients, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final category we scored was short-term care. This nursing home received a strong nursing score in our assessment, with a B. Even though this was not quite as elite as some of its other scores, this is still one of our stronger grades in that category. Short-term care scores are important for patients in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a broad spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients that were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.