Brookdale Riverwalk Skilled Nursing

In addition to earning a strong overall score, this nursing home performed well in our short-term care category. In fact, we awarded it an A for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Our short-term care ratings are vital for residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more highly-skilled nursing. This means a broad scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this area is the number of residents that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. We assessed the levels of nurses at the nursing home, as well as the quantity of hours those nurses worked with residents, in determining our score in this category. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of B- for our inspections rating. This is a very respectable nursing score. Inspection grades are based on items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are a key thing to look for on these inspections. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to resident safety. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

Moving on to our fourth category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of D in the area of long-term care. This is the nursing home's worst category grade. Of course, this category pulled down the nursing home's overall profile to a certain degree. If you are seeking anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care grades. One of the criteria we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours is vaccinations. Fortunately, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 98.6532 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.