The Bishop Spencer Place

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our short-term care category. Short-term care ratings are based on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a broad scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, not to mention other types of therapy. This nursing home provides more services with physical therapists and registered nurses than most nursing homes we looked at. This is usually a favorable sign. The final metric we looked at in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it performed as well as just about any facility in Missouri in this area with 58.2 percent of its patients returning home. At most nursing homes, fewer than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Nursing ratings are mostly associated with a facility's level of nurse staffing. This place provided 5.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day, which is among the better totals in the country. A significant portion of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which are one of the most skilled levels of nurses. We are really impressed by these statistics. On top of providing impressive levels of care, this place also performed well in several of the quality measures we looked at. For example, in terms of the number of its residents suffering falls resulting in major injury, this place performed as well as any nursing home Missouri. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Racking up another strong category grade, this nursing home also excelled in inspections, where it received an impressive grade of A-. Few facilities fared better in this area. Our inspection scores account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this area usually have few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

The final category we scored is this nursing home's weakest area. However, even in its worst category we still gave it an acceptable grade of C in long-term care. Our long-term care ratings are based on a facility's amount of nursing services. This includes a broad spectrum of personal care services, ranging from assistance with activities of daily living to routine healthcare services. On top of providing favorable levels of nurse staffing, this facility gave the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents healthy. This combination proved to be effective as this facility was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 1.16 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a substantially lower hospitalization rate than most nursing homes.