Ashley Medical Center Nursing Home

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Our inspection scores weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this area generally have few of these severe deficiencies. 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

To complement its top-shelf accomplishments in other areas, we gave this nursing home a score of A for our long-term care rating. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 96.11651 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to the third category, this nursing home also received a score of B+ for its short-term care rating. This is an above average score in this area. Short-term care grades are often employed to measure a nursing home's rehabilitation services To have highly rated rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final metric we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

The final area we graded was nursing, in which this facility received a grade of B. This actually proved to be this nursing home's worst category. A nursing home could be doing a lot worse when their lowest grade still is superior to most other nursing homes. Nursing ratings are largely tied to the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of turning a patient more often.