Salude Repeats as a U.S. News & World Report Rated Best Skilled Nursing Facility for 2018-2019

Salude has repeated from 2017-2018 to 2018-2019 as a U.S. News & World Report Best Skilled Nursing Facility in the United States. This is the top honor for post-acute care given by the respected news and reference source.

U.S. News & World Report, the global authority in health care rankings, identified the Best Skilled Nursing Facilities for 2018-19 and released its updated Nursing Home Finder. U.S. News evaluated more than 15,000 facilities nationwide, in every state and nearly 100 major metropolitan areas. Of the 359 skilled nursing facilities listed in Georgia, only 17 received U.S. News’s top honor as Best Skilled Nursing Facility in the United States.

"We are proud and honored to be recognized by U.S. News as one of the Best Skilled Nursing Facilities in Georgia and the United States. While our patients’ experience and clinical outcomes are most important to our mission, we are certainly ecstatic to be recognized with this top honor,” said Dr. Alan L. Wang, MD, SFHM, FACP, Salude’s CEO. Dr. Wang added, “The Best Nursing Home ratings are designed to help potential residents and their families navigate this important decision.”

Now in its ninth year, the U.S. News Nursing Home Finder offers comprehensive information about care, safety, health inspections, staffing and more for almost all nursing homes in the country. With this tool, individuals can easily conduct a customized search for a highly rated skilled nursing facility by location, Medicare coverage, and size. The Nursing Home Finder reflects U.S. News’s analysis of data collected and published by the federal government using a methodology defined by U.S. News.

For the 2018-19 ratings, U.S. News introduced a new and first-of-its-kind Short-Stay Rehabilitation rating. This new rating aims to provide patients with a clearer view of the quality of care provided by nursing homes to short-stay patients in need of intensive rehabilitation or nursing services before they return home after a surgery, stroke, accident or illness. Salude was only one of several facilities in the state of Georgia to also earn this High-Performing rating in Short-Stay Rehabilitation.

Significant updates for the 2018-19 Best Nursing Home Overall Rating include:

• U.S. News changed its overall rating methodology to put more emphasis on staffing quality.
• U.S. News used staffing data only from April 2018 onward.
• U.S. News applied additional rating indicators of care that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) doesn’t use in its own ratings — such as whether the amount of rehabilitation therapy provided was determined by reimbursement or by patient-centered needs.

“Every year we strive to improve upon the information we offer to caregivers making critical health care decisions for their loved ones,” says Ben Harder, Chief of Health Analysis at U.S. News. “We understand that nurse staffing is among the most important predictors of nursing home quality. With our new methodology and Short-Stay Rehabilitation rating, we have taken several steps to ensure that nursing homes that consistently provide high-quality care to residents are highlighted.”