Ashton Parke Care Center

On top of receiving a strong overall score, this place also received first-rate health inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our better scores in this category, with an A. Our inspection grades are tied to items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' scale. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

Adding to its profile, this nursing home also earned a score of B for its short-term care rating. This is a well above average score in this area. In the area of short-term care, we try to assess indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. This wasn't quite as good as some of its other scores, but a grade in this range is not the end of the world. When calculating our nursing scores, we weigh both nursing hours and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This facility provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures. While this place got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in some of these quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed well in this subcategory. This is often a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving patients more often.

The last category we rated is long-term care. We gave it a grade of B- in this category. This is not a bad grade in this category. Long-term care ratings are based in part on a facility's volume of nursing services. This means a broad range of personal care services, ranging from help with activities of daily living to routine medical services. One of the factors we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccines. Fortunately, this nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 94.210526 percent of its patients. Lastly, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.