Baton Rouge General - Mid City Skilled Nursing

To pair with its favorable overall grade, we awarded this facility a grade of A+ for inspections. Inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category usually have very few of these severe deficiencies. Unfortunately, it does not look like we were able to find deficiency counts for this nursing home. Without complete information regarding deficiencies for this facility, it was challenging to fully evaluate the place in the area of inspections.

This nursing home also was given an A+ for its short-term care score. Our short-term care ratings are thought to be more important for those requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this area is the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with levels of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The last category we looked at is long-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a solid grade of B-. This ended up being this facility's worst category. Our long-term care grade focuses on a facility's assistance with daily living rather than the skilled nursing or healthcare services that are critical to a skilled nursing facility. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We weren't able to find information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.