Seneca House

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively minor. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also excelled in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of A. Not many facilities fared better in this category. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a life threatening health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. Nursing scores are based in large part on quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home provides 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility Missouri in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of moving residents more frequently.

The next category we scored was short-term care, in which this facility was given a grade of B. Believe it or not, this is this facility's worst category. A facility is doing something right when it's poorest grade still is better than most other facilities. With our short-term care score, we try to craft a sound measure for rehabilitation. In doing so, we assess the facility's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.