River Bluff Nursing Home

On top of earning a strong overall grade, this nursing home performed well in our nursing category. We gave it a grade of A+ for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Our nursing score assesses quite a few subcategories, many of which are associated with nursing hours. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility earned a grade of B for its inspections rating. This is a well above average score in this category. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This facility was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe. This indicates that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to resident safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

Additionally, this nursing home also was given favorable long-term care grades this year. In fact, we gave them one of our higher scores in that category, with a grade of B. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 98.43444 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a deadly health condition for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final category we graded is short-term care. This facility was given a B- for the area. In crafting our short-term care grades, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to formulate a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents who who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well below average.