Forest Park Health Campus

The main reason this facility received a decent overall grade is its excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our better grades in that category, with an A. This is a much better grade than the place's overall score, which was decent but certainly not elite. Arguably the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple relatively minor dings aren't the end of the world.

This nursing home also was given an impressive grade in our short-term care category. We gave this nursing home a better than average grade of B in that area. In crafting these short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to formulate a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 5.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

This facility was awarded its next most favorable category score in the category of long-term care. We awarded this nursing home a grade of B- in this category, which is an acceptable grade. Our long-term care scores are more meaningful for patients needing more conventional assistance related to activities of daily living. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is higher than the majority of nursing homes. This nursing home also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Our last area is nursing, in which we gave this facility a grade of C in that category. The nursing grade assesses several components, however, the main consideration is the quantity of nurse hours per patient per week. This particular nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This figure is significantly below average. Lastly, our nursing grades also consider quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is often an indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses aids to assist its residents.