Denali Center

In addition to being a first-rate facility overall, this facility also excelled in our short-term care category, where it received an elite grade of A+. In determining our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. This grade is frequently a useful measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who eventually returned home from this nursing home. We found that 7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In that category, we gave this facility an A+. There are quite a few factors included in this area. Many of the factors are tied to the quantity of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.6 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 place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning a patient more often.

The next category we looked at is long-term care. Contributing to its elite resume, this facility also performed well in that area. In fact, it received a of A- in the area. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it generally means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 99.58678 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a deadly illness for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Lastly, this nursing home also received excellent inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our best scores in that area, with an A-. Few facilities earned an A- or better in every category. These inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was hit with 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.