Nursing home rankings: St. Louis has few outstanding facilities
August 29, 2017
The day has finally come that every child fears — the day that you have to make the agonizing decision of whether or not to place your aging parent in a nursing home. While this is truly a choice that no one likes to face, the unfortunately reality is that there often comes a time when an aging family member is simply unable to care for themselves any longer.
Once a loved one is placed in the care of a nursing home, the ability to monitor the quality of care they receive is significantly important — especially since we want to ensure they are never victims of nursing home abuse or neglect. This is why the searchable online database provided by U.S. News & World Report is so helpful.
You can use this database to review the overall quality of nursing homes in a particular state or city, and you can even narrow your search by overall rankings and the size of the facility. Many families use this database —otherwise known as “Best Nursing Homes Rankings” — to find the ideal nursing home facility to meet the needs of their elderly loved ones.
This particular database/ranking relies on data provided by Nursing Home Compare, a website ran by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS), which is the federal agency responsible for setting up and enforcing nursing home standards. Specifically, CMS has assigned an overall rating of one to five stars — with five being to best — to each nursing home based on its performance in three areas: nursing staffing, medical quality measures and state-conducted health inspections.
Unfortunately, these ratings don’t always paint a good picture of nursing home care, particularly in St. Louis, and Missouri as a whole. In fact, some alarming statistics include:
- Of the 175 nursing homes rated in the St. Louis area, only nine — roughly 5 percent — had a perfect five-star rating
- Of these same 175 nursing homes, nearly one-third had a rating of only one or two stars
- Of the 513 nursing homes rated in Missouri as a whole, only 34 — roughly 7 percent — had a five-star rating
- Of these same 513 nursing homes, 140 — roughly 27 percent — had a rating of only one or two stars
Sadly, as these numbers make quite clear, nursing homes in Missouri still have a long way to go before they provide the quality of care we expect — and our loved ones deserve. If you or your loved has been the victim of nursing home abuse or neglect, you should contact an experienced attorney as soon as possible to learn what legal options may be available.