Ruston Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it earned an elite inspection score. In fact, its inspection grade was far superior to its overall score. In our inspections category, we gave this facility a grade of A+. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with higher scores in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. 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 a great sign for the quality of care at this facility.

Another one of this facility's more impressive category scores came in the area of long-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a B. It actually outpaced most facilities in this category. For prospective residents looking for a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 71.65179 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is somewhat below what we were hoping for but still a respectable figure. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, we were pleased to find facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we gave this nursing home an F. This is certainly not one of this facility's better areas. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with nurse staffing levels. This nursing home provided a meager 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident each day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in computing our nursing scores. This facility performed well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls.

This facility's least impressive category was short-term care, which is the last category we analyzed. It received an abysmal F for this area. Even with several solid grades in other categories, this score is still concerning so we wanted to make a note of it. Short-term care ratings are meaningful for residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more highly-skilled nursing services. This means a vast spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Given its score in this category, we were not stunned to discover that this nursing home is well below average in terms of the quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the data we assessed. Honestly, this was about what we expected here. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. This definitely was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 4.3 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, about half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.