Riverwood Center

On top of having a decent overall grade, we also would like to point out that this place received favorable inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our better scores in this area, with a grade of B. This is a notably better score than the nursing home's overall grade. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this category usually have few severe deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies an immediate threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

Additionally, we also would like to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received favorable long-term care marks in this assessment. We awarded them one of our more impressive grades in this category, with a grade of B. This turned out to be the facility's second strongest grade. For prospective residents looking for a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 88.80918 percent of its patients. This is a bit less than we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable figure. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. We assessed the licensure of nurses working for the facility, in addition to the quantity of time the nurses spent with patients, in determining our rating in this area. This facility provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, our nursing scores also factor in quality-based metrics, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this place actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is generally a reliable indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

Our final area is short-term care, where we gave this nursing home a grade of B- in this area. Our short-term care ratings are believed to be most important for folks needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. It does not appear that this nursing home submitted information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 5.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.