River Crossing of Creve Coeur

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a B- for our inspections rating. In fact, the facility received very impressive inspection report this year. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection ratings. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some can be relatively insignificant. This facility was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

We also want to point out that this nursing home received an F for its long-term care grade. Nursing homes that don't fare well in long-term care typically aren't as well-staffed and are lagging in some of the areas of routine medical care we assessed. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. We were concerned by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated only 76.43504 percent of its residents for pneumonia. To our surprise, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.

In addition, we gave this facility an F in the area of nursing care. In determining a nursing home's nursing score, we consider the number of hours nurses are seeing patients and the level of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home provided a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing ratings. This place performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these metrics to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care.

The last area we assessed was short-term care. This facility received an abysmal grade of F in this category. Short-term care grades are important for people in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a wide spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The final metric we considered in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 3.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar statistics sunk this facility's short-term care score.