Ashby Ponds

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, this facility also excelled in the category of nursing, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. Our nursing score assesses the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of licensure of the nurses and the number of hours spent with patients. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home Virginia in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of turning a patient more frequently.

This facility has also received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Our inspection ratings are based on many pieces of information found on the a nursing home's inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this area typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This facility was hit with 8 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to create an immediate risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The third category we assessed was short-term care. Adding to its dominant resume, this nursing home also excelled in that category. In fact, it received a of A for the area. Short-term care grades are typically used to measure a facility's rehabilitation services To have quality rehabilitation services, facilities generally must provide better levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Switching gears to the next category, this nursing home was awarded a very strong long-term care rating. We gave it an A- in this category, giving this facility straight A's. For patients seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. After we finished looking at the amount of care provided by nurses, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 72.86822 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.