Riddle Memorial Hospital

One of the reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is it received an A+ in our inspections category. This is just about as good as it gets in this critical category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively minor. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In addition, this nursing home received high marks in the area of short-term care. Consequently, it received one of our best scores in that area with a grade of A+. Short-term care ratings are critical for people seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires additional skilled nursing. This means a wide range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients that ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 6.5 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Turning the page to our third area, we awarded this facility a score of A for its long-term care grade. This is a very strong score. For residents looking for a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. After looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In the final category, we awarded this nursing home an A+ for its nursing grade. This completed a very impressive report card. In calculating a nursing home's nursing score, we weigh the amount of time nurses are with residents and the level of skill of those nurses. This nursing home averages 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving a resident more frequently.