Ashton Medical Lodge

While this facility's overall grade was decent, it really fared well in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category, which is one of our best scores. Our inspection grades weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this category typically have very few severe deficiencies. While this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This means the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

Additionally, we gave this nursing home a grade of B in our long-term care category. This is one of our more favorable scores. When facilities 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 aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 98.313255 percent of its residents, which is higher than the average nursing home. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility's second least favorable category is short-term care, where it earned a grade of just D in that area. This is a relatively poor score. With our short-term care grade, we attempt to create a sound barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we analyze a facility's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Given its score in this area, we were not stunned to find that this facility is well below average in terms of its number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we looked at. Frankly, this was what we expected to find. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This wasn't a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 4.9 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. At most facilities, about half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.

This nursing home's weakest category is nursing, which is the final area we analyzed. Unfortunately, we gave it an F for this category. Even with a few acceptable scores in other areas, this grade is still disappointing so we would like to to make sure you are aware. Our nursing grade focuses on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We consider both the levels of licensure of the nurses as well as the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home offered only 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.