Life Care Center of St Louis

This facility's overall score was propped up by the fact that it has earned favorable government inspections in recent years. We gave it a strong score in that area, with a B. This is a notably better grade than the facility's overall score. Inspection grades are tied to many datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This facility also excelled in our nursing category, where it earned an B. Few facilities performed better in this area. Nursing scores are largely tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving patients more often.

This nursing home was awarded its next best category grade in the category of short-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of B- in this area, which is a reasonably acceptable score. Short-term care grades are based on a nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a wide spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other variations of therapy. We were surprised to find that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. It offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. The final metric we considered in this area is the number of residents that were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 4.8 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Turning to the final area, this facility was given a decent long-term care score of C. For long-term care residents, the primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. After we finished looking at the amount of nursing care, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. We were pleased to discover that this facility vaccinates 98.290596 percent of its residents for pneumonia. This nursing home also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.