Riverwoods

This nursing home earned a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to emphasize its nearly flawless government inspections in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of A- in this category. These inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to resident safety or health. A few minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

The next most favorable category we awarded this facility in any category came in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a B-. In the area of short-term care, we try to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Unfortunately, we found that this place provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The more important thing is determining what bearing this had on quality of care. The last measure we considered in this category is the number of residents that returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 5.3 percent of this facility's residents returned home. This figure was below the national average.

The next area we looked at was long-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a decent grade of B-. If you are seeking services other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care scores. One of the datapoints we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccinations. Thankfully, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 97.08455 percent of its residents. This place also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home's worst category was nursing, which is the last category we scored. In this area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of just D. Our nursing grade is based on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. With only 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, this nursing home's nurse staffing levels were significantly below the national average. To pair with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this place also did not perform as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing ratings. We looked at the percentage of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and major falls. This nursing home had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average facility. This may be a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, these statistics hurt this facility's nursing grade significantly.