Riverside Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

Although this facility's overall grade wasn't a highlight, it actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing. We gave it a B- for that category. Our nursing grade is largely associated with a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place fared better in some of the quality measures we assessed. It performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the number of hours of care offered.

This nursing home's next most favorable category is short-term care. We gave it a B- in this area. This is essentially a middle of the road grade in this area. In computing these short-term care scores, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our objective is to formulate a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. We were surprised to find that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. In fact, it offered fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. It is still important to determine whether this is adversely impacting the quality of care. The last metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This nursing home earned slightly below average government inspections in recent years. We awarded them a C in this category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite insignificant. This nursing home had 8 deficiencies on its government inspection report, but we were relieved to find that none were category G through L deficiencies. This tells you CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies to create an imminent danger to patient safety or health. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.

The final area we graded was long-term care. This facility was given a bottom of the barrel grade of F in that area. For residents seeking a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are a key measure. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Fortunately, this facility gave the vaccine to 94.67455 percent of its patients, which is a very solid figure. Surprisingly, this facility also keeps its residents out of the hospital. It had just 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.