Salem Center

While this facility's overall grade was as bad as it gets, it actually didn't perform terribly in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B- for that category, which is one of our better scores. Our inspection scores are tied to many items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are an important item to look for on these inspections. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to patient safety. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This facility also didn't fare terribly in the area of long-term care. In fact, we awarded it a grade of C in that category, which is another one of its more respectable scores. In determining these long-term care scores, we analyze the facility's ability to maintain its permanent residents' health and quality of life. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. We were pleased to learn that this facility vaccinated 98.62069 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In our next category, we gave this facility a rock-bottom F in the area of short-term care. Short-term care grades are meaningful for individuals looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Based on its grade in this area, we were not stunned to learn that this facility is well below average in terms of its number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its residents based on the metrics we assessed. Honestly, this was about what we expected here. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return home from this facility. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.

Moving on to the fourth area, this facility didn't perform well in this category either. Due to a rock bottom grade of F in nursing, this is really as as uninspiring as it gets. Nursing ratings are based in large part on levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home offered only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is not a very impressive figure. Unfortunately, this facility also had abysmal marks in some of the quality-based metrics to go along with its weak nursing hour totals. We looked at the percent of patients suffering pressure ulcers and we were disappointed. This nursing home was at roughly 150 percent of the national average in this statistic. This is a bad sign when you consider that so many pressure ulcers could be avoided with better nursing care. This statistic helped pull down this facility's nursing score quite a bit.