Bayou Pines Care Center

In addition to receiving a great overall score, this nursing home also received top notch health inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our higher grades in this category, with an A+. Inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this area generally have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

Additionally, this nursing home also was given favorable long-term care grades this year. Indeed, we gave it one of our more favorable grades in that category, with a score of B+. If you are seeking anything other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care ratings. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 92.59259 percent of its patients, which is slightly less than we expected. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. This wasn't quite as good as some of its other scores, but a grade in this range is not the end of the world. Our nursing score weighs a host of datapoints. The most important one is the number of hours nurses spent with residents. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient daily, which is well below average. Lastly, our nursing grades also consider quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this place performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is usually a reliable indicator that a place has quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

The next area we analyzed was short-term care, is this facility's least impressive area. We awarded this facility a D in that category. This was one of the couple of dings in a very solid profile. In computing our short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to devise a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. It looks like this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. It provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most other nursing homes. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.