Utuqqanaat Inaat

We also found that this facility excelled in our long-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. When facilities receive this type of score in long-term care it is usually a good sign for resident care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is much higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. The nursing score is based on quite a few subcategories, however, the primary one is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility Alaska in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of turning residents even once per day.

The next category we looked at was inspections, where this facility also received an A+ grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Our inspection grades are based on several items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this area typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This place was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to create an imminent threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the final category, we awarded this nursing home an A+ for its short-term care rating. This wrapped up an elite profile. In determining our short-term care scores, we assess a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. This rating is considered to be a reliable measure of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final measure we looked at in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.