Life Care Center of St Louis

Life Care Center of St Louis turns out to be one of a list of 50 nursing homes in Saint Louis, Missouri. The city has more options than most areas in the state. Sporting an overall rating of B-, this is likely a middle of the pack facility. This grade is right in line with the city grade in Saint Louis. This nursing home is better in some categories than others, but it didn't have any bad scores in any of our four major categories. More information about these categories can be found below.

This facility received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to point out its nearly flawless health inspections in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of A- in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some can be relatively insignificant. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

Turning to the category of short-term care, we gave this nursing home a score of A- in that category. Our short-term care scores are critical for prospective residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a vast spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. When we looked at this facility's physical therapist hours, we found it offered more hours of physical therapy per day to its residents than most nursing homes. The final statistic we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that it fared as well as just about any facility in Missouri in this area with 67.1 percent of its patients returning home. With most facilities, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

One of this facility's better category grades was in the area of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of B-. In calculating a facility's nursing grade, we weigh the amount of time nurses are seeing residents as well as the level of skill of those nurses. Based on the CMS data, this nursing home offers 3.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based measures, such as minimizing major falls. This nursing home performed admirably in this metric. Avoiding serious falls is often a good indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a facility provides enough nurses to assist its patients.

The next area we assessed was long-term care. For that category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of C. In forming our long-term care ratings, we assess the facility's personal care services. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 95.35865 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is more than the average nursing home. The last statistic we assessed was its hospitalization rate. Although it had 2.62 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, its risk adjusted statistic was not too bad.