Lacoba Homes

With an address in Monett, Missouri, Lacoba Homes is one of just a few nursing homes in this city. With an A- overall grade, we rated this nursing home in the top third of all nursing homes in the United States. As far as we can see, this facility looks like a wonderful choice for most people. This nursing home's impressive report card was highlighted by its inspection grade, which is addressed in the next section.

In addition to faring well overall, this nursing home also earned a nearly flawless inspection report. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that area with a grade of A+. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received a fine long-term care grade. In fact, this ended up being its second most impressive category grade. In that area, this facility received a score of A-. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.7 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home was awarded a strong short-term care score as well. We awarded it one of our higher scores in that category with a score of B+. Our short-term care ratings are thought to be more meaningful for residents requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically mandates more highly-skilled nursing. This means not merely nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. One of this nursing home's strengths is physical therapy hours. We found that it offers more hours with physical therapists to its residents than most facilities. The last metric we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 42.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

The next area we looked at turned out to be this facility's poorest category. Nevertheless, even its lowest point would likely be a highlight for most facilities. We awarded it an above average grade of B in nursing. In computing our nursing grades, we factor in both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home offers high levels of nursing care, with an average of 4 hours per resident each day. This is more nursing care than most nursing homes provide. Lastly, we also looked at nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these data points as reliable measures of the quality of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.