Salemhaven

In addition to being a strong nursing home overall, it also earned A+ inspections recently. Its inspections were virtually flawless. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively minor. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its first-rate assessment, this nursing home also was awarded a dominant short-term care score, with a grade of A-. Our short-term care grade is often used to judge a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. To provide high-end rehabilitation services, facilities generally must feature better levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

The third area we analyzed was long-term care. This nursing home was awarded an impressive long-term care grade, with a B+ in this category. For long-term care residents, the primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 93.822395 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be somewhat lower than we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next category we assessed is this facility's poorest category. Nevertheless, even its worst category would actually be a highlight for most facilities. In fact, we gave it a favorable grade of B in our nursing category. The nursing rating includes numerous subcategories. The most important one is the quantity of hours nurses spent with residents. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also factored a few quality-based metrics into our nursing grades. This facility was relatively weak in two of the major areas we focus on, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.