St Helena Parish Nursing Home

Although this facility's overall score is not a highlight, it received a somewhat respectable grade in the area of inspections. We awarded it a B- for this category, which is not bad. Our inspection scores are tied to many datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are a key item to look for on these inspections. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to the well being of residents. While this place had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, CMS flagged this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. This is not what you want to see. We advise you to direct your search elsewhere.

We also awarded this facility a grade of B- for our nursing rating. Nursing grades are primarily associated with a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provided just 0 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a relatively low total compared with most facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home actually fared better in some of the quality measures we assessed. In fact, it scored well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

This facility's next highest category ended up being its short-term care grade, where it was awarded a grade of B-. In the category of short-term care, we strive to assess measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We assess a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and various therapists. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the typical facility. The last measure we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The next area we graded was long-term care. This facility was given a grade of B- in the category. In a long-term care setting, the primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. Once we concluded our assessment of the amount of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were pleased to find that this facility vaccinates 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. This nursing home keeps its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.