Salisbury Rehabilitation and Nursing Center

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Our inspection scores are tied to several items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors did not consider 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.

Among this facility's other strengths is its dominant long-term care score. It received one of our more favorable grades in that area, with a score of A-. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 96.70659 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents healthy. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Additionally, this facility also was awarded favorable short-term care grades in our assessment. In fact, we gave it one of our better grades in that category, with a grade of B. Our short-term care ratings are probably more meaningful for people in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally requires additional skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we assessed in this area is the number of residents that returned home from the facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Moving on to our last category, this nursing home received an acceptable nursing grade of B-. Our nursing rating assesses several components, however, the paramount consideration is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a somewhat uninspiring figure which is well below the national average. Finally, nursing scores also factor in quality-based measures, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this facility actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is usually an indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses aids to assist its patients.