The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium is building a $70 million skilled nursing facility to help relieve pressure at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage.
Along with a separate project also underway, the $257 million expansion of emergency care services at the Native hospital, the nursing facility will help the consortium meet growing demand for care as Alaska’s population continues to age, consortium representatives said.
The projects represent the consortium’s largest investment since it was founded in the 1990s, said Natasha Singh, the consortium’s interim president and CEO. The medical centre, located off Tudor Road in the city’s university and medical district, opened in 1997, replacing the former Aboriginal hospital in the city centre.
Since then, the Alaska Native population has grown by 70,000 people, Singh said. It is also aging like the rest of Alaska and the United States, she added. Those factors require more medical care.
“We call it the ‘gray tsunami’ of all our seniors coming of age in increasing numbers,” she said. “We’re very grateful for that, but it’s a challenge for our infrastructure.”
Plans for the near-term skilled nursing facility call for a two-story, 92,000-square-foot building to be completed by summer 2026, the consortium said in a statement. The facility will house about 80 beds at Elmore Road and Ambassador Drive, where preparatory work for construction has begun. Construction will begin in earnest in the coming months, the statement said.
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Skilled nursing facilities care for patients who no longer need hospital services but still need advanced care from nurses and other health care providers. They provide rehabilitation and treatment until a patient is ready to return home, such as someone who needs physical or speech therapy after a serious car accident or recent surgery or illness.
According to the Tribal Health Consortium, Alaska has the fewest skilled nursing beds in the United States, per capita.
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The new skilled nursing center will help reduce demand at the center, Singh said.
The hospital is too often in “diversion status,” meaning it is at capacity, prompting a search for beds at other hospitals in Alaska or even outside the state, she said.
It’s a problem Providence Alaska and Alaska Regional Hospital also sometimes face, she said.
“Every day we have between 20 and 35 patients at ANMC who are well enough to leave the hospital, but not yet well enough to go home,” she said. “The skilled nursing facility will be where those patients can go, which will free up those beds and allow for better flow.”
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The facility will include a vocational and physical rehabilitation area, public and private dining spaces, a chapel and an outdoor courtyard, among other services, the consortium said.
It will offer “a residential-like living experience” close to clinical services and patient housing, Shea Siegert, a spokeswoman for the consortium, said in an email.
Angela Lewis is the administrator of two skilled nursing facilities for Providence Alaska, the Extended Care and Transitional Care Centers in Anchorage near DeBarr Road and Boniface Parkway.
There is a shortage of skilled nursing beds in Alaska as the state’s population ages, she said.
“I can tell you we are always full and we get calls all the time,” she said, including from hospitals in rural communities looking for additional nursing home beds to transfer Alaska Native patients, she said.
The new facility the tribal health consortium plans to build will help alleviate some of that pressure on Alaska’s health care centers, she said.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy recently vetoed a $15 million appropriation that would have funded construction of the nursing home, citing the need to “preserve general funds for cost savings and fiscal stability.”
“The Dunleavy administration would need additional information on the scope and financing of the project before deciding to invest significant state general funds in a project of this size,” Jeff Turner, a spokesman for the governor, said in an email.
The consortium was disappointed by the veto, but it will not halt construction, Singh said.
“ANTHC will draw on its limited budget reserves to keep this critical project on track,” she said. “As the referral hospital for the statewide tribal health system, we know how important these services are to the health of the Alaskans we serve.”
Earlier this year, the tribal health consortium also launched a $257 million project to expand emergency services at the Native Medical Center.
The 182-bed hospital has less than half the beds of the 400-bed Indian Health Service facility it replaced in 1997.
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Emergency department expansion plans call for a first phase with a three-story addition to the hospital that will include 21 additional emergency rooms, expanded behavioral health treatment and surgical recovery areas and a modernized ambulance bay, according to a statement from the consortium.
The second phase will see the construction of three additional floors above the first section, with the hospital seeking additional funding for the project, the statement said. It will include 60 new inpatient beds and the hospital’s first helipad for trauma services.
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