Five out of seven Teche Area nursing homes have been given the lowest score possible in a national five-star rating system that measures health inspections, staffing and overall quality of nursing homes.

Area nursing home ad-ministrators, however, be-lieve the system does not show actual quality measures of local nursing homes.

“The system is flawed at best, and that’s an understatement,” said Amanda Landry, an administrator for Franklin Health Care Center. “We still can’t figure out how they came out with one star when we had four stars in our quality measure. It’s not a true measure of how facilities are operating now. The best thing to do is to visit and look in each room and ask questions.”

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The ratings were introduced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in December to give people an additional basis for comparing nursing homes, said Tony Salters, regional public director for the Centers of Med-icare and Medicaid.

“It’s to provide a more user-friendly means of assessing the information we already post on Nursing Home Compare,” Salters said.

The rating system only applies to nursing homes that accept Medicare and Medicaid as forms of insurance. That includes Belle Teche Nursing and Rehab in New Iberia, Consolata Home in New Iberia, Nexion New Iberia Manor North, Nexion New Iberia Manor South, Maison Teche Nursing Home in Jeanerette, St. Martinville Rehab and Nursing Center and Franklin Health Care Center.

None of the nursing homes in the Teche Area received a four- or five-star rating, but the St. Martinville nursing home and Cons-olata received the highest ratings in the area, each with three stars. The other five were given one-star ratings, according to the ratings Web site, www.medicare.gov, though an administrator with Manor North said it received a two-star rating.

The health inspections included in the rating system are compiled through on-site visits from trained surveyors who look at 180 different things, including medical records and talking with residents about the care they are receiving, Salters said.

The staffing measure looks at the number of staffers compared to the number of nursing home residents and how many trained nurses work at the facility. The ratings also look at how sick the residents are in each home because the staff numbers will depend on that factor.

“We (CMS) believe that our method for calculating the rating system is sound, and that we’ve made the appropriate adjustments to address concerns and ensure that the rating is a fair representation of the nursing home's quality,” Salters said, adding that many people have “expressed support” for it.

Salters said the rating system is not a substitute for visiting each nursing home, and local nursing home administrators agree. Several local administrators say the rating system does not give an accurate portrayal of the quality of each nursing home.

“There are a lot of mistakes riddling those ratings,” said Brian Lee, general counsel for Nexion, which owns Manor North and Manor South. “The ratings include old and outdated information, and are focused on technical compliance rather than providing quality of care and quality of life.”

Lee said the ratings do not always include all the staffing nursing homes have in their system, but Salters said staff reports are sent in by the nursing homes, not compiled by individual agencies.

An administrator for Belle Teche declined to comment on the rating. Ricky Bonin, administrator at Maison Teche, said the rating system is “worse than flawed, created by policy makers and theorists who don’t work in the system.”

“I think personally the star system, the way they have it set up, is a travesty to our industry,” he said, adding the ratings can be skewed for many different reasons and are negatively based.

Bonin said if Maison Teche took in 30 patients with bed sores — people he said many nursing homes might decline — and cured 29 of them, they would be faulted for the one they did not cure.

Bonin said Maison Teche is “always trying ... to do things that make us better. But when you really get down to it, it’s really about your relationship to patients and families. There’s no star rating for that.”

The state Department of Health and Hospitals performs the federal surveys used in the rating system.

Recent survey results and nursing home compliance records can be found online under the Health Standards Section of the DHH Web site at www.dhh.louisiana.gov/offices/?ID=112.

Staff reporter Mary Catharine Martin contributed to this article.