Lutheran Nursing Home

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing category. We gave them an A+ in this area. We scrutinized the levels of nurses employed by the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of hours those nurses spent with residents, in determining our score in this category. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving a patient more often.

This facility also performed well in the area of short-term care, where it received a score of A. Few facilities performed better in this category. Our short-term care ratings are considered to be most critical for those in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates more skilled nursing. This means not just nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who eventually returned home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

Turning the page to our next category, this nursing home was awarded an excellent long-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in this area. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 94.71154 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a dangerous ailment for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility does not leave this to chance. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Finally, this facility also earned a nearly flawless inspection. As a result, it earned one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. With this impressive grade, this place is one of the few nursing homes in Missouri to receive straight A's. Inspection scores are based on several data points found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this area typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.