Yukon Kuskokwim Elder's Home

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ for nursing. Our nursing score is primarily associated with the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 1 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home 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 generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

An additional reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ long-term care grade. This is flat out as strong as it gets in this category. When nursing homes receive this type of score in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is significantly higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We also want to note the fact that this facility was awarded a superb score of A- in our short-term care area. In calculating these short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to create a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Finally, we found that this nursing home has earned favorable government inspections in recent years. We awarded it a B in this area. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area generally have few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.