To maintain the integrity of the business their parents and grandparents began, this sibling trio focuses on strategic growth and technological advancements.

Although the Salmon siblings now hold higher positions than when they started in the business, they continue to keep their fingers on the pulse of what’s happening at all Salmon Health and Retirement communities. With grandmother and founder Helen Salmon now a resident at The Willows at Westborough, keeping a close eye on resident comfort has never been easier.

Salmon Siblings

Now under the guidance of third generation Salmon family members, including Andrew; Kate Salmon-Robinson, director of marketing and communications; and Matt Salmon, vice president of programs, quality, and innovation, the organization’s designation as a family-run business has been taken to a new level. With two grandmothers in residence and children in the organization’s child care centers, Kate, Andrew, and Matt live and breathe Salmon Health and Retirement.

“Our goal is to maintain and strengthen what our parents and grandparents built,” said Kate. “Our grandparents founded the company, but our parents took it to another level, starting things like adult day health and assisted living communities. Through calculated growth, we want to continue in that same vein.”

A natural addition
Salmon Health and Retirement, formerly known as The Salmon Family of Services, owns and operates four locations in Central Massachusetts, each with multiple levels of care, including Whitney Place Assisted Living Residences; Beaumont Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Centers in Natick, Northborough, Northbridge and Westborough; Whitney Place Adult Day Health in Natick and Northbridge; and The Willows at Westborough, a retirement community for active seniors.

Over the years, the company’s moderate but consistent growth opened up new possibilities as many of the markets began to overlap. While looking at the market trends in their industry, the Salmon family decided to develop another retirement community for active adults in nearby Worcester, Mass.—the second largest city in the Commonwealth, with close proximity to hospitals and nursing schools.

When completed, The Willows at Worcester will include 40 town homes and cottages with attached garages and 151 centrally located luxury apartment homes with underground parking. The campus will include a swimming pool, elegant dining options, and a café. In addition, the campus’ existing 28-bed level IV rest home will undergo renovations, which will put a modern continuing care retirement community on the property.

“We’ve always had independent apartments with a focus on community living, but this campus will mark the first time we’ll build and operate town homes and cottages for ourselves,” said Kate. “With the boom of the 62-plus housing market in New England, this development seemed like a natural addition to the continuum of care we already have in place.”

Investing in the future
In the 1960s, Danny and Dottie Salmon took over the business from Danny’s parents, Helen and Dan. As a result, Kate, Andrew, and Matt grew up in and around the Salmon family business. “What has always set our family business apart from others, especially in our industry, is that my grandparents and parents were nurses,” said Matt. “They based their decisions on clinical need, and we’re following in those footsteps.”

In July, the Salmon family invested more than $500,000 in high-tech beds made by German-based manufacturer Völker. While in the process of upgrading the rehabilitation and nursing home facilities on the company’s Westborough and Northbridge campuses, the team researched these beds that, although more expensive, provide clinical benefits traditional nursing home beds don’t offer.

Although the company isn’t the first in its industry to integrate the beds into its retirement community, it may be the first to order so many. “We bought more than 300 of the beds so that all of our residents at those locations could benefit,” said Kate.

“Our goal was to make that level of quality care accessible to all residents at both locations,” said Andrew, who oversees the Northbridge campus. “We’ve already seen a decrease in nighttime falls and improvement in resident sleeping patterns, which has allowed our staff to get more work done in the evening to improve other aspects of those residents’ lives.”

The sleeping surface of the Völker beds comprises a series of flexible, horizontal supports on curved movable and mounted components called butterflies. The bed’s “micro-stimulation” promotes blood circulation and helps prevent skin deterioration, which is a major issue for bedridden patients. “As a privately held and family operated business, we don’t have shareholders to answer to when we make investments,” said Kate. “We can make investments now that, even if they aren’t the best thing for the bottom line today, will be the best for our residents in the long term.”

Next generation of care
Recently, there has been a push on the nursing home side of the business to change the culture of those facilities from a medical model—driven by doctors and nurses—to more of a residential model, driven by residents’ needs. The idea behind the culture-change movement is to de-institutionalize nursing home facilities, making them more like home, with neighborhoods instead of numbered units and a change in the language and policies of how the facilities are run.

“The culture-change movement is catching up with us because it’s been the focus of our family business since day one,” said Matt.

Although these details have been in place since the company opened its first nursing home in 1952, Salmon family’s third generation recognizes the need to take that level of comfort one step further. “Our Home Within a Home approach is based on resident-directed care, taking the decisionmaking from what the doctor thinks and putting it into the hands of what the residents believe is in their best interests,” said Matt. “Home Within a Home is the next generation of how our care processes are developing.”