Salem Crossing

On top of being a strong facility overall, this facility especially excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned a grade of A+. Not many nursing homes performed better in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be relatively minor. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

Additionally, this nursing home also was awarded favorable long-term care grades this year. Indeed, we awarded it one of our stronger grades in that area, with a score of B. Facilities that excel in long-term care tend to provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 99.65753 percent of its patients, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

We also gave this nursing home a middle of the pack score in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of B-. Our short-term care grade is commonly employed to grade a nursing home's rehabilitation services In order to have highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to offer better levels of highly skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other types of therapists. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this nursing home provided information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. The final item we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.9 percent of this facility's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.

The last category we assessed was nursing. We gave it a C in that area. This is not a bad grade in this category. There are a number of factors included in this category. Most of the subcategories relate to the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures. Although this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did well in this metric. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning a resident even once per day.