St Louis Nursing Homes

St. Louis nursing homes offer around-the-clock social and medical treatment for seniors and patients that cannot live independently. Nursing homes admit patients in need of rehabilitation or health maintenance for serious medical conditions. Also called skilled nursing facilities, nursing homes often specialize in a particular medical issue, like Parkinson’s care, heart disease care or wound treatment. They have a professional team of staff, including physicians, skilled nurses and nursing aids, social workers, therapists and non-medical staff, working to meet the individual needs of their patients.

The basic breakdown for St. Louis skilled nursing facilities is between short-term care and long-term care. Short-term care patients expect to recover from medical events like strokes, heart attacks, aneurisms and falls. Rehabilitation for short-term patients often means using physical, speech, occupational and respiratory therapy. Nursing staff plan and apply a personalized path of recovery for individuals in order for patients to get back to their normal lives as quickly as possible. Discharged short-term patients still in need of medical care usually turn to assisted living or in home options. Long-term care is for seniors and patients with severe mental or physical disabilities. Nursing staff provide medical services and supplies, social support and companionship, and help with activities of daily living to keep long-term patients comfortable and healthy. Although some long-term patients eventually move to hospice, some patients’ conditions improve to the point where they can seek assisted living care.

Most long-term patients pursue nursing care stays due to a decline in their condition. Their previous level of care is no longer able to treat them. Short-term patients need nursing stays to recuperate from an acute medical event resulting in a hospitalization. Their doctors will require nursing stays if they have not fully recovered during their hospital stays. Future short-term patients should seek the best possible hospital care they can get under the circumstances. Hospital care is the ever-important initial step of their recovery. In St. Louis, patients can find quality health services, based on patients’ hospital experiences, at Mercy Hospital St. Louis and Barnes Jewish Hospital.

St. Louis’ nursing care costs are affordable compared to other high population urban centers and the national average, although they are elevated above the Missouri state median. Private SNF rooms bear a monthly cost of $5,475. Semi-private rooms cost $4,563 per month. Relative to the affordability of other senior care, home care is the most expensive type of care in the city. Homemaker services and home health aide cost $3,670 and $3,718 per month, respectively. Adult day health care and assisted living facility rooms cost $1,594 and $2,925 per month, respectively.

Although many think of nursing homes as places where patients wait on their deathbed or places providing improper care, this is not the whole reality of the industry. There are many different types of nursing homes. Other than different types of care, nursing homes vary in setup. Some skilled nursing facilities are more hospital like and others are made to feel more like an open community. Likewise, differences extend to quality of care. Seniors and their families should research all the SNFs that fit their financial, care and quality needs before making their final decision. Our site wants to help lay out all their options and help them understand the complex nature of nursing homes. All seniors and their loved ones deserve to receive quality nursing home care from dedicated, professional, attentive and compassionate workers.