Azria Health-Ashland

To pair with its relatively modest overall score, we gave this facility an A- for its inspection grade. This grade is far more impressive than the facility's overall rating. Arguably the most important factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Based on this, we still had positive view of this nursing home's recent inspections.

This facility's short-term care score turns out to be one of its best grades. The facility was given a grade of B- in this category. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to evaluate measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. When we looked at this facility's physical therapist hours, we found it offered more hours of physical therapy per day to its residents than most nursing homes. The last measure we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. This place performed better than most nursing homes in this area with 51.7 percent of its patients returning home.

This nursing home's next best category ended up being its long-term care score, where it received a C. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We discovered that this nursing home provided the vaccine to only 81.6 percent of its residents, which is slightly concerning. Nevertheless, this place keeps its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 1.33 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days.

Turning to our last category, we gave this nursing home a D for the area of nursing. This is the facility's worst category rating. The nursing score includes many factors, however, the main one is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. With only 3 hours of nursing care per patient each day, this place's nurse staffing levels were quite a bit below the national average. To pair with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this facility also didn't perform as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in determining our nursing scores. We looked at the percent of patients sustaining pressure ulcers and major falls. This nursing home had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average facility. This could be a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. These scores pulled down this facility's nursing grade significantly.