Heritage Manor of Bossier

The main reason this nursing home received a decent overall score is its excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our better grades in that area, with an A. This is a much better score than the facility's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. This is certainly an excellent sign for the quality of care at this nursing home.

This facility performed well in nursing. We awarded it an C for that category, which is one of our best grades. The nursing category is based on several components, many of which are associated with quantities of nurse staffing. This place provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a somewhat uninspiring figure which is well below average. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. While this facility got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality measures. With less than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it fared remarkably well in this subcategory. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of moving residents even once per day.

This nursing home's third best category turned out to be short-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. In determining our short-term care grades, we scrutinize a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This area is often a reliable measure of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. We were surprised to find that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. In fact, it supplied fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is important to determine whether this is adversely impacting the quality of care. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

Turning to our final area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of D for the area of long-term care. This was the facility's weakest category rating. For prospective patients seeking a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are an important measure. One of the statistics we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours is vaccinations. Fortunately, this nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 98.9418 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.