Petersburg’s nursing home received top honors for its quality of care at the Alaska Hospital and Healthcare Association conference last month.
Mountain Pacific is a nonprofit healthcare improvement organization that oversees medical facilities in four states. The organization conferred the 2023 Excellence in Quality award to three nursing homes across Alaska. Petersburg Medical Center’s Long Term Care Unit was among those awardees.
Mountain Pacific’s criteria for this year’s award included infection prevention and vaccination rates; as well as decreasing adverse drug events and readmissions.
The Mountain Pacific award isn’t the first honor PMC’s Long Term Care Unit received this year. According to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the facility got the highest possible rating on its most recent health inspection in February of this year. It also scored above state and national averages on flu and pneumonia prevention.
However, the facility fell behind on some other quality measures. The national survey recorded that a quarter of PMC’s long term care residents had symptoms of depression — which is more than three times the statewide average. The percentages of residents who experienced urinary tract infections and injuries from falling were also higher than the statewide average.
Two other Alaska nursing homes received Mountain Pacific’s Excellence in Quality Award: Utuqqanaat Inaat [oo-too-kah-naht ee-naht] in Kotzebue, and Yukon Kuskokwim Elders Home in Bethel.
