Rivergate Health Care Center

This nursing home received an inspection grade which is stronger than its overall rating. Inspection scores are associated with the facility's recent health inspections. We awarded this nursing home a very solid grade of B in this area. Inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this category usually have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as 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 health or safety. A few minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

Another one of this nursing home's stronger areas was in the category of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of B. Nursing grades are based largely on levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The next area we looked at was short-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a decent grade of C. Short-term care grades are generally employed to judge a facility's rehabilitation services In order to offer highly graded rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide higher levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. We were surprised to find that this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. The facility supplied fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. The final item we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 4.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.

The last category we looked at is long-term care. It received a lowly F for this area, which is an abysmal score. This is certainly a major disappointment. When facilities receive this kind of grade in this category it is a bad sign for patient care and it may indicate that the facility is not as well-staffed. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Frankly, we were a bit alarmed this facility gave the vaccine to only 81.076065 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This is its best score in this category.