Life Care Center of Florissant

This facility earned an elite short-term care score. We gave this nursing home an impressive grade of A in this area, which really helped out its overall grade. In computing our short-term care ratings, we assess a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. This category is frequently a solid measure of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This nursing home also received a strong nursing grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B+ in that category, which is one of our better scores. When calculating our nursing ratings, we assess both nursing hours and the training levels of the nurses. This facility provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next highest category we awarded this nursing home in any category came in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a B-. In our long-term care grade, we weigh the sheer quantity of services provided by a facility, along with a few quality statistics. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. This nursing home also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning our final category of inspections, we gave this facility a D. This turned out to be this nursing home's worst grade and it really hurt its overall grade. Our inspection rating is based on the nursing home's inspection reports. Since the data is collected by government inspectors, we weight it heavily in overall grade. Our inspection grades weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. This facility had one category G through L deficiency, which are among the more serious deficiencies. These categories indicate that the deficiencies uncovered by the government inspectors had potential to pose actual harm to patients. Lastly, we would like to point out that this nursing home was assessed large government fines in recent years exceeding $50,000. This usually suggests that inspectors became frustrated after several years of bad health inspections.