The Suites Rio Vista

While we did not rate this nursing home favorably overall, we want to draw your attention to its relatively favorable short-term care rating. We awarded it a respectable grade of B+ in this area, which was much better than its overall score. In computing our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This grade is generally a reliable measure of a facility's rehabilitation services. It does not look like this facility provided registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients that returned home from this facility. We found that 6.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

One of this facility's higher category scores came in the category of long-term care. This proved to be its second most respectable category. In that category, we awarded this facility a C. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. One of the datapoints we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccinations. Thankfully, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. Finally, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

We awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of nursing as well, with a grade of C. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics. Although this facility got dinged a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of these quality metrics. With fewer than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared well in this statistic. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a resident more often.

Turning the last category of inspections, this ended up being this nursing home's weakest link. Inspection scores are based on a nursing home's recent government inspections. We gave this facility a D in this category, which is not a very good grade. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. Generally, you should be most cautious when considering a facility that has severe deficiencies on its inspection reports. This facility had 4 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only favorable thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they posed a threat to patient health or safety. Lastly, we need to point out that this facility was assessed large government fines in recent years exceeding $50,000. This often indicates that government inspectors became fed up after several years of failed health inspections.