Ashton Place Health and Rehab

On top of receiving a great overall score, this nursing home also received top notch inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our higher scores in that area, with a grade of A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some can be quite insignificant. 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.

Among the reasons we rated this nursing home so well is that it was given a favorable long-term care score. Indeed, long-term care turned out to be its second most favorable category grade. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a score of A-. Facilities that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a dangerous health condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B. Nursing scores are based largely on quality and quantity of nursing care. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures 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 nursing home Arkansas in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving a resident at least once a day.

The final area we looked at was this facility's poorest area. However, even in its worst category we still gave it a decent grade of B- in short-term care. In computing our short-term care ratings, we look at a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This score is generally a reliable assessment of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Unfortunately, it does not look like this nursing home provided information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.