Sitka Community Hospital-Ltc

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ for nursing. Our nursing rating weighs many datapoints. The most heavily weighted factor is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This facility provided 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also received an A+ long-term care grade, rendering it one of the few facilities to be given multiple A+ category scores. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility also was awarded a very strong short-term care grade. In fact, this turned out to be its third most impressive category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our short-term care grades are based on the nursing home's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a vast range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, in addition to other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a score of A-. This wrapped up a straight A report card for this place. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.