Petersburg Medical Center

Petersburg Medical Center is in Petersburg, Alaska, a city with a population of 3,202 people. This proved to be an A+ facility, which is the most impressive score. In addition, this facility is based in a hospital, which often means the facility offers more extensive healthcare services. Headlining this facility's remarkable profile is its nursing score, which we will address in the next paragraph.

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. There are numerous datapoints included in this area. Many of these subcategories relate to levels of nurse staffing. This facility provides an incredible 9.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Very few nursing homes provide this quantity of nursing care to their patients. Out of that total, many of the hours were provided by registered nurses, which is one of the most highly trained levels of nurses. On top of offering high levels of care, this facility also excelled in the quality-based metrics we looked at. By way of illustration, it performed as well as any nursing home in the state when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these datapoints as reliable indicators of the caliber of nursing care being provided.

In addition, this nursing home received elite marks in the category of long-term care. Consequently, it was given one of our best scores in that category with a grade of A+. When nursing homes receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for resident care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After considering the impressive nursing hours provided by this nursing home, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Another impressive feature of this facility is its inspection grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively minor. While this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the final category we looked at, this facility was given a very strong grade of A- in our short-term care category. With this grade, the nursing home completed a straight A profile. Our short-term care ratings are vital for individuals needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a wide range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. This nursing home elevated its grade in this category by offering more care from registered nurses to its residents than the average facility. The final measure we assessed in this area is the number of patients who returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home rather than remaining at the facility permanently.