Riceville Family Care and Therapy Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category generally have few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. In that category, we awarded this facility an A. Our nursing grade is based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of licensure of the nurses and the number of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0 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 in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning to another strength for this facility, we awarded them one of our better scores in our short-term care category as well, with a grade of B+. In the area of short-term care, we seek to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and various therapists. We were not able to locate information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The final measure we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

The last category we scored is long-term care, where this facility received a C. This actually is this nursing home's least impressive area. This is nevertheless not the end of the world. Our long-term care grade assesses a nursing home's assistance with daily living instead of the skilled nursing and medical services that are critical to a skilled nursing facility. One of the factors we considered after nursing hours is vaccinations. Fortunately, this nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. This facility keeps its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.