Life Care Center of St Louis

This nursing home excelled in our short-term care category, with an impressive grade of A- in this category. This really boosted its overall grade. In calculating these short-term care scores, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to formulate a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Finally, we looked at the number of patients that ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 6.6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This nursing home also excelled in inspections, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed as well in this category. Inspection grades weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this area usually have very few severe deficiencies. This nursing home received 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-, which is a decent grade. In calculating a facility's nursing grade, we weigh the number of hours nurses are seeing residents as well as the levels of training of the nurses. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality measures. Although this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in a few of these quality measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this metric. This can be a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a resident at least once a day.

Turning to the final area, we awarded this nursing home a D for long-term care. This was the facility's worst category score. Of course, this grade hurt the facility's overall grade a bit. For prospective residents looking for a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is more than the vast majority of nursing homes. Surprisingly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.