Lake Charles Care Center

In addition to being a respectable nursing home overall, this facility also excelled in the category of inspections, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

Another one of this nursing home's higher category scores was in the category of long-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. It actually fared better than most facilities in this category. Facilities that excel in this category typically provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a deadly condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The third category we assessed is short-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a C. In determining our short-term care grades, we look at a facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. This grade is generally a solid assessment of a facility's rehabilitation. We found that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. It offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The final statistic we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This facility's weakest area is nursing, which is the last area we assessed. For this category, we gave this nursing home a grade of just D. The nursing grade assesses many subcategories, most of which are associated with levels of nurse staffing. With only 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, this place's nurse staffing levels were significantly below the national average. To pair with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this facility also didn't fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and major falls. This nursing home had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average nursing home.