Acadia St. Landry Guest Home

Small Budgets, Big Hearts

Thirty-one years ago, Acadia St. Landry Guest Home, a nursing facility and rehab center based in Churchpoint, Louisiana, opened for business with 68 beds. Several extensions were added over the years to the dually-certified rehab and nursing facility, in order to accom­modate an increasing demand for beds in the early 1980’s. “We are a long-term care skilled nursing facility, but we also offer short-term rehab stays for acute post hospital stays, therapy and/or wound care,” says Brian Hens­gens, administrator and one of the boards of directors at Acadia St. Landry Guest Home. The total capacity was brought up recently with the construction of a new hallway.

Today, Acadia St. Landry Guest Home is a 152-bed general medicine and surgical facil­ity, specialized in post-acute rehab nursing and wound care. On average, the hospital sees a census of 125 patients with an average of six discharges and six admits monthly. “We have got the gambit, across the board—from the elderly patients with Alzheimer’s and the Parkinson’s residents, to young, paraplegic patients get­ting wound care in the hopes of going home and everything in between,” says Hensgens.

Small budget, big hearts and opportunity

The humble, not-for-profit, family-run business operates on a restrictive budget. “Approxi­mately five percent of our funding is from
private pay, and nearly 25 percent from Medi­care; the rest from Medicaid,” tells Hensgens. “Our biggest issue related to funding is
attracting and retaining high-quality staff.

Although we are blessed in our location to have a much lower turnover than the industry stan­dard -which is still well over 30 percent,” he says.

Nevertheless, the nursing facility that “feels like home” has made the most of it by leverag­ing its lean resources with active partnerships. “Our biggest opportunities are with a strong re­hab company in Jeff Davis Therapy Center who partners with us and has as many as nine employ­ees on-site, daily,” says Hensgens. “We also have a doctor here who is affiliated with the wound care centre in the next town and we have worked out a partnership here with him,” he says.

Customer-focused business, community-based workplace

Acadia St. Landry is renowned especially for its sense of community. “We call our halls by street names, and tend to think of our rooms as apart­ments,” says Hensgens. “There is also a lot of family here, as many of our employees have relatives who are patients here as well,” he says. The Guillory and Dellahoussaye family owners asked Hensgens to join the board of directors in which he has sat on for over five years. “Our medical director has been here for 18 years,” he says, adding there are many long-term employ­ees who have worked with the hospital family.

All 150 employees wear many hats and are quite efficient at their jobs. The community hos­pital also relies on its base of 250 volunteers to help the facility run smoothly, in addition to making personal donations. “It has to be a community effort if you want to do it right.”

Healthcare reform

When asked whether or not the healthcare reform would make an impact, the hospi­tal administrator says indeed, there would be detrimental effects on its long-term care ser­vices. “In that respect, long-term care was apparently never asked to come to the table, so to speak, about any of these issues, nor asked how to design a program,” says Hensgens, adding they got a lot done for just a little.

Approximately, 85 percent of Acadia residents are on Medicaid and 10 percent on Medicare, as funded by the state. “We run maybe 5 percent of the Medicare part, and the rest is private pay,” he says. Any changes at the federal or state level would definitely have an impact on the smaller community hospitals, like Acadia St. Landry. Most especially if the Medicaid budget was de­creased. “Why would you take from us and try to make something else?” asks Hensgens.

``Our goal here at Acadia St. Landry Guest is to nurture a culture of family and home while continuing to give quality health care.”

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