Ruston Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

Ruston Nursing and Rehabilitation Center is one of a mere three available nursing homes located in Ruston, Louisiana. We awarded it an overall grade of C, which is a middle of the pack score. This grade was right in line with the city grade in Ruston, which is admittedly a little below average nationally. The best part of this nursing home's report card was its exemplary inspection grade. Inspection grades are discussed in the next paragraph.

The primary reason this facility received a decent overall score is its impeccable inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better scores in that category, with an A. This is a notably better score than the place's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even 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 an excellent sign for this nursing home.

In addition, we awarded this facility a grade of B+ in our long-term care category. This is one of our better grades. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are well cared for. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 91.98397 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be slightly less than we expected but still a reasonably acceptable figure. Finally, we looked at the nursing home's number of hospitalizations. We found that this place had 2.69 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days.

Unfortunately, this facility received an F for its short-term care score. Our short-term care ratings are based in part on a facility's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a broad range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Given its poor grade, we were not shocked to find that this nursing home provided substantially fewer registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This definitely was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 38.8 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, around half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.

Turning to the final area, this facility really did not fare very well. Due to a poor grade of F in nursing, this is its weakest category grade. In computing a nursing home's nursing rating, we assess the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home averages 3.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is below the national average. To pair with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this place also didn't fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in calculating our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents experiencing major falls and pressure ulcers. This place had more pressure ulcers and falls than the average nursing home.