Life Care Center of Federal Way

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received a much better grade for nursing than it received overall. In fact, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. The nursing grade includes a variety of datapoints. The most heavily weighted one is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Washington in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning residents at least once a day.

We also gave this nursing home an impressive score in short-term care. This facility earned a grade of B+ in this area, which turns out to be one of our more favorable scores. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This score is generally a useful measure of a facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Next we looked at this nursing home's inspection grade This grade is based on the nursing home's recent inspections. We gave it a C in this category. These inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was assessed 7 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to find that none were in any of the categories labeled J through L. This tells you inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to put resident health or safety in immediate harm or jeopardy. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.

The final category we analyzed is long-term care. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F in this area, which is a poor score. This is certainly a significant disappointment. For long-term care residents, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Fortunately, this nursing home administered the vaccine to 94.44444 percent of its residents, which is an above average figure. To our surprise, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than most nursing homes. Sadly, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.