Heritage Manor of Slidell

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively minor. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home was given strong grades in the area of long-term care as well. Consequently, we awarded it one of our most elite grades in that category with a area of A. Facilities that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The third area we graded is short-term care, where this facility received a B- in this area. Short-term care grades are often employed to assess a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation In order to offer highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must provide higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. We were not able to find information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The final item we looked at in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 5.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.

The final category we scored is nursing. This facility was awarded a very good nursing grade in our assessment, with a grade of C. Although this is not nearly as elite as many of its other scores, this remains a respectable grade in that area. The nursing rating is based on numerous data points. The most heavily weighted one is the quantity of hours nurses spent with patients. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This figure is significantly below the national average. Finally, nursing ratings also consider quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is usually a good indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses aids to assist its residents.