The Oaks of Houma

While this facility's overall grade was not bad, it really fared well in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A+ for that category, which is one of our highest scores. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively minor. This place received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies to be an immediate risk to patient health or safety. A couple of minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

In addition, we also wanted to point out that this nursing home was awarded favorable long-term care marks this year. We awarded them one of our higher grades in this category, with a grade of B. This turned out to be the facility's second highest grade. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are well cared for. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 90.32258 percent of its residents, which is a few points below what we anticipated. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home earned a very good nursing rating this year as well. It received one of our higher grades in that category with a score of F. In determining a facility's nursing score, we consider the number of hours nurses are seeing patients as well as the levels of training of the nurses. This facility provided only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is not a very impressive figure. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing scores. This nursing home fared well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

The final category we analyzed is short-term care. We gave it a lowly F in this category, which is a bottom of the barrel score. This is obviously a significant concern. In our short-term care score, we strive to create a sound measure for rehabilitation services. In this process, we assess the facility's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. With its abysmal grade in this area, we weren't surprised to learn that this nursing home offered far fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that just 4.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.