Baton Rouge Senior AdvisorWhat does a Louisiana nursing home admission require?
For any Medicaid-certified nursing home, whatever the payer, the Office of Aging and Adult Services (OAAS) must determine that the person meets nursing facility level of care, a Louisiana-licensed physician must order the admission, and the person must be screened for serious mental illness or developmental disability before admission.
After a hospital stay, the hospital's case manager usually starts this paperwork. From home, families call Louisiana Options in Long-Term Care at 1-877-456-1146 (TDD 1-877-544-9544), weekdays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., which handles nursing home requests along with waiver and LT-PCS requests.
What is nursing facility level of care?
It is OAAS's finding that a person's needs, measured by a standardized assessment of daily activities, cognition, behavior and medical conditions, are high enough to justify nursing home care; the same finding is required for the Community Choices Waiver, LT-PCS, the ADHC Waiver and PACE.
That shared test is useful: a parent who qualifies for a nursing home almost always qualifies, on the care side, for Medicaid's home-based programs too. The difference is in waiting lists and how many hours of help each program provides.
Who pays for a nursing home stay in Louisiana?
Medicare pays for up to 100 days of skilled nursing facility care per benefit period after a qualifying inpatient hospital stay of at least three days, with a daily coinsurance after day 20; long-term stays are paid privately, by long-term care insurance, or by Louisiana Medicaid once the resident qualifies.
Louisiana's long-term care Medicaid uses an income cap of $2,982 a month in 2026, with a spend-down for higher incomes, a $2,000 resource limit for a single person and a 60-month look-back on transfers. Residents on Medicaid keep a $45 monthly Personal Care Needs Allowance. See nursing home Medicaid.
How do Baton Rouge families compare nursing homes?
Start with CMS Care Compare data for each certified home, then visit: look at the latest inspection date and deficiency count, staffing hours and turnover, and ask how the home handled its last evacuation or extended outage.
LDH's November 2026 report shows 40 licensed nursing homes in the ten parishes; CMS publishes an overall rating for 39 of them, and 12 hold four or five stars (Care Compare data dated October 1, 2026). Our nursing home list sorts them by CMS rating, inspection date and deficiencies.
Can a nursing home resident return home later?
Yes: many admissions after a hospital stay are short rehabilitation stays, and Louisiana gives Medicaid-only nursing home residents priority for the Community Choices Waiver, which includes transition services for people leaving a nursing home.
LT-PCS is also available to nursing home residents who could leave with help. Ask the home's social worker early whether a return home is realistic and who will coordinate it, and ask about home health and outpatient therapy in your parish.
Side by side
| Louisiana nursing home admission requires | Louisiana nursing home admission does not require | |
|---|---|---|
| Care need | An OAAS level-of-care finding | A hospital stay (unless Medicare is paying) |
| Orders | A Louisiana-licensed physician's order | A specialist referral |
| Screening | Pre-admission screening for mental illness or developmental disability | A psychiatric evaluation for everyone |
| Payment | Medicare, private funds, insurance or Medicaid | Medicaid approval before admission |
Sources: LAC 48:I.Chapter 68 for adult residential care, Louisiana Department of Health (Health Standards Section and Office of Aging and Adult Services) program pages, the Governor's Office of Elderly Affairs, CareScout and VA rate tables, each cited in the text. Our editorial standards explain how we check them.
