Ashtabula County Nursing Home

This facility's overall grade was propped up by the fact that it has received favorable health inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better scores in that area, with a B+. This is a much better grade than the nursing home's overall grade. Inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area generally have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

One of this nursing home's more favorable category scores was in the category of long-term care. This ended up being its second most respectable category. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-. Long-term care grades are based on the facility's volume of nursing care. This includes a vast scope of personal care services, ranging from help with activities of daily living to routine healthcare services. One of the factors we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccinations. Thankfully, this facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home's next highest area ended up being its short-term care score, where it received a B-. Our short-term care scores are arguably most important for folks in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than the typical facility. The hope is that this does not adversely affect the quality of care. The final item we looked at in this area is the number of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that just 5.9 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This facility's least impressive category was nursing, which is the last category we looked at. Unfortunately, we gave it an abysmal F in this category. Despite several solid grades in other categories, this grade is nevertheless alarming so we would like to to draw your attention to it. Our nursing score looks at the facility's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This place offered just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing ratings. This place fared well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.