Brightpointe at Rivershire

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies an immediate threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was elite in the category of short-term care, where we gave it a score of A. Only a select group of nursing homes fared better in this category. In computing our short-term care scores, we look at a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other types of therapists. This score is considered to be a fair measure of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

The next category we assessed is long-term care. Adding to its superb profile, this facility also excelled in that category. In fact, it received a grade of of A for the area. Facilities that do well in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. Once we finished looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is too frequently a life or death condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Switching gears to the next area, this nursing home was given a highly favorable nursing score. We awarded it an A- in that area, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. In computing our nursing scores, we weigh both nursing hours and the skill levels of the nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.