Life Care Center of Federal Way

While we were not complementary of this facility's overall grade, it actually earned an impressive nursing rating this year. We gave it a B in this area. Our nursing rating consists of a handful of factors, however, the most important consideration is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home averages 0.4 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 facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a system of moving a patient more frequently.

In addition, we also would like to draw your attention to the fact that this facility was given favorable short-term care marks in this assessment. We awarded them one of our more favorable grades in this area, with a grade of B. This turned out to be the facility's second best grade. Our short-term care grades are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a wide spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 5.2 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

This nursing home did not receive favorable inspection reports in recent years. In fact, it only received a grade of D for its inspection grade. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. We recommend you scrutinize the severity of those deficiencies. This particular nursing home was assessed one category G through L deficiency, which rank among the more severe categories of deficiencies. These categories indicate that the deficiencies found by CMS had potential to pose actual harm to residents. Finally, we want to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received significant government fines in recent years in excess of $50,000. This typically signifies that CMS inspectors became frustrated after multiple years of failed inspections.

The last area we assessed is long-term care, in which this facility received an abysmal grade here also. We gave it a lowly F for this area, which is obviously very concerning. For prospective residents looking for a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is an important category. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 97.13376 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is more than most nursing homes. To our surprise, this facility also fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.