Ashland Healthcare

Although we didn't give this nursing home a good overall score, we actually gave it a strong grade in the category of inspections, where it earned a B+. Our inspection grades account for several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. You should avoid places with a list of severe deficiencies flagged. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

Adding to its strong profile, this facility also received an excellent nursing grade, with a grade of B. Nursing scores are largely tied to a facility's nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

As it turns out, this nursing home only earned a grade of D for its long-term care rating, which is not a very good score. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. After we finished assessing the volume of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. We were pleased to discover that this nursing home vaccinates 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this nursing home also fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.

The next area we scored was short-term care. Unfortunately, we gave it an F in this area, which is a bottom of the barrel grade. Short-term care ratings are important for prospective residents needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires additional skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a wide spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Based on its grade in this area, we were not surprised to find that this facility is well below average in terms of its quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours offered to its residents based on the data we looked at. Frankly, this was what we expected to find. The final measure we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to return home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 3.8 percent of its patients returning home.