Riddle Memorial Hospital

One of the reasons this place received a great overall grade is that it received an A+ in short-term care. This is as good as it gets in this category. In our short-term care assessment, we endeavor to create a valuable barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we assess the facility's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This facility also received a nearly flawless government inspection. As a result, it earned one of our highest scores in that category with a score of A+. This was one of the few places to receive multiple A+'s. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being 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.

Turning the page to our next area, we gave this nursing home a score of A for its long-term care score. This is a first-rate grade. For patients looking for a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate information on vaccination rates. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In the last area, this facility also was given an excellent nursing rating, with a grade of A-. This topped off a rare straight A report card. Our nursing rating is primarily tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these areas as predictive indicators of the caliber of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.