Riverwoods at Exeter

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ long-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is far higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. In computing our nursing scores, we factor in both nursing hours and the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home averages 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

An additional strength for this nursing home is short-term care, where it received an A+ rating. This is just about as elite as it gets in this category. Our short-term care scores are believed to be more meaningful for people requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing. This means not only nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients that ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 6.4 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Adding another A+ to its profile, we also awarded this facility yet another perfect score in the area of inspections. Straight A+'s across the board is something only a handful of nursing homes in New Hampshire achieved. Our inspection grades are based on pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this area typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.