Riverside Health Services: Staffing Plan Outdated - OK
The plan said ten licensed practical nurses were needed to cover a full 24-hour period. The director of nursing said that number was not correct.
The plan had been written in October 2025 and never updated. By the time inspectors arrived six months later, the director acknowledged that residents were sicker than they had been when the document was drafted, and that the facility needed more staff working directly with them. The assessment had not changed to reflect that.
Riverside Health Services had 36 residents at the time of the inspection.
The October 2025 facility assessment laid out a specific vision of how care would be staffed: seven licensed practical nurses on the day shift, five on evenings, four overnight, and a single registered nurse needed for one daytime shift per week, including weekends. On paper, that added up to ten licensed practical nurses across a 24-hour period.
What the facility was actually doing looked different. The director of nursing described an arrangement where she, as the director of nursing and a registered nurse, along with an assistant director of nursing and a minimum data set coordinator who held an LPN license, were counted as available to assist with residents during business hours, five days a week. On the floor itself, two LPNs worked the day shift from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and two more covered nights from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
The director counted up the licensed staff members she could point to and arrived at seven.
The gap between what the assessment projected and what the facility was actually running is not, by itself, the central problem inspectors identified. The problem is that the assessment was never revised to close that gap, or to account for what the director herself described as a higher acuity resident population than existed six months earlier.
A facility assessment is supposed to drive decisions about staffing, resources, and the facility's capacity to care for its residents around the clock, including nights, weekends, and emergencies. It is meant to be a living document, updated when the circumstances it was written to describe no longer match reality.
At Riverside, the circumstances had changed. The director of nursing said so plainly. The document had not.
The inspection was filed as a complaint survey. Inspectors rated the violation at the lowest level of harm, noting minimal harm or potential for actual harm. Thirty-six residents were listed as affected.
What the inspection report does not say is whether any resident experienced a gap in care because the staffing model running the facility was built on figures its own nursing leadership no longer believed were accurate. The director's candor with inspectors was notable. She did not defend the October numbers. She said they were wrong, explained what the staffing actually looked like, and acknowledged that the residents in her building in April 2026 had greater needs than the residents the assessment was written to describe.
The assessment, in the meantime, still said one registered nurse was needed one day a week.
For a facility with 36 residents and a nursing director who described higher acuity and a need for more direct care workers, the gap between the document and the reality it was supposed to capture remained open on the day inspectors walked in, and it remained open when they left.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Riverside Health Services from 2026-04-29 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Download the official CMS inspection PDF from Medicare.gov
Additional Resources
Data source: This article is based on inspection data downloaded directly from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) via Medicare.gov. CMS releases inspection reports in bulk; we publish the findings as documented by state surveyors in the official Form CMS-2567 Statement of Deficiencies.
Plan of correction: The CMS report we receive does not include the facility's plan of correction. Facilities submit plans of correction separately to state survey agencies and those responses may not be reflected in CMS data at the time of publication. The absence of a plan of correction in our data does not mean one was not filed. Readers who want information about corrective steps taken are encouraged to contact the facility directly or their state survey agency.
Corrections may have occurred: Inspection reports reflect conditions observed on the date of the survey. Facilities may have implemented corrections, staffing changes, additional training, or other remediation since the report was issued. We report what CMS provides and encourage readers to seek current information from the facility.
Editorial process: Inspection findings are extracted from CMS source documents and synthesized using AI, reviewed for factual accuracy against the original report by our editorial team.
Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: September 7, 2026 · Our methodology
Riverside Health Services in Arkoma, OK was cited for violations during a health inspection on April 29, 2026.
The plan said ten licensed practical nurses were needed to cover a full 24-hour period.
Health inspections identify deficiencies that facilities must correct. Violations range from minor documentation issues to serious safety concerns. Review the full report below for specific details and facility response.