Ashton Memorial Living Center

With an overall grade this high, it should come as no surprise that this facility performed well in inspections, where it received an A. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with better grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. Nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility an A. In determining our nursing grades, we look at both staffing levels and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home 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 country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning a patient at least once a day.

Turning the page to our next category, this nursing home was awarded a top-shelf long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a score of A- in that category. Facilities that do well in this category tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In the final area, we gave this nursing home a grade of A for its short-term care rating. This finished off a very favorable profile. Our short-term care ratings are probably more important for residents needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.