Rio Pinar Health Care

This nursing home's overall grade was propped up by the fact that it has earned favorable inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our better scores in this area, with a B. This is a notably better grade than the nursing home's overall score. These inspection ratings 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. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

This facility received its next highest category grade in the area of long-term care. We awarded this nursing home a B- in this category, which is a decent grade. For patients in need of a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are a key measure. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is more than the average nursing home. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home's nursing grade appears to be one of its better features. The facility received a grade of C in this category. We assessed the skill-level of nurses working for the facility, in addition to the quantity of time those nurses spent with patients, in calculating our rating in this category. This nursing home provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a somewhat alarming figure which is well below the national average. Lastly, our nursing ratings also consider quality-based metrics, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this place performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is usually a reliable indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a facility provides enough nurses aids to assist its residents.

The last area we assessed is short-term care. We gave this nursing home a C in this area. Our short-term care scores are presumably most important for patients requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the typical facility. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 3.4 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.