A Business Built Around Caring
Photo/Edd Cote
Salmon Health & Retirement, 5 Lyman Street, Westborough 01581
The third generation of the Salmon family to help run the business, includes, from left, Matthew and Andrew Salmon and Kate Salmon-Robinson.
Salmon Health and Retirement, a third-generation family business based in Westborough, has grown from a single nursing home in 1952 into a network of senior living and health-care communities.
Along the way, the Salmon family has been a pioneer in the industry, championing the idea of offering a continuum of care. The family’s innovations are the result of listening carefully to customers and working to anticipate their needs.
Meeting Needs
Matthew Salmon, the firm’s vice president of programs, quality, and innovation, tells the story of how adult day care came about: “My father (Daniel) was coming out of church one morning and a fellow parishioner approached him with a request. His mother was living with them, but needed to be watched during the day. [He asked him], Could they drop her off in the morning at Beaumont (the Salmon Family’s nursing home) and pick her up at the end of the day? Well, the answer was no because we had a state license for nursing home care, but that gave him the idea.” Now the Salmon family runs Whitney Place Adult Day Health Center, which meets this need.
The brainstorm for assisted living was simply the result of experience. Danny and Dorothy Salmon (the parents of Matthew, Kate, and Andrew, who run the company today) were building a new independent living facility. The Salmons were planning a facility that would have both independent living apartments (the Willows) and a rehabilitation and skilled nursing center (Beaumont) when they realized there was a gap between those two options — some seniors need a little help, but not a nursing home. So they built a wing of studio apartments at the new facility, put it near the medical suite and near the dining facility and called it catered living.
Being a family business is part of what makes this innovation possible.
“As a family business, we don’t report to stockholders,” Matthew said. “So our time horizons are not quarterly. We make plans that are five, 10, 15 years out.”
But there was never pressure on the kids to join the business, according to Kate Salmon-Robinson, director of marketing and communications. “They were very afraid of trapping us in the business,” she said. “They very much didn’t want to be like the family businesses you read about where the kids don’t want to be there, but feel pressured to be.”
Kate went to graduate school to earn a degree in health-service management and policy. Once she graduated, she worked for another company. And when her family called and asked if she would consider a job with them as an administrator, she was the one to balk.
“I was concerned about joining the family business so early in my career. But I had a mentor who worked in another company who said ‘Kate, you’re crazy. You have an opportunity to go and learn from the best — why would you turn that down?’ ”
Matthew joined about a year after Kate.
“Unlike Kate, I never worked here. I never thought I would be interested in working in the business.” He became a physical therapist, and ended up marrying one of his classmates. Together, the two traveled across the country for a nationally rehab company. At that time, therapists were in very high demand, and the Salmons were in great need of that skill, so they asked Matthew and his wife to consider coming to work for the firm. Matthew and his wife had had just enough experience with the larger firm to be interested in coming home.
“I was definitely expendable in the massive rehab company I worked for,” Matthew said. “This had a much different feel. There was an appeal in working with my sister and my dad.”
The one member of the management team who is not a member of the Salmon family is CEO Phil Lacasse. But he is almost family. “It’s a brotherly partnership,” Matthew said.
The Salmons have put a lot of effort into learning how to be a successful family business. The team tries not to make business decisions at family functions. Instead, they have formal family meetings.
“We’ve learned that something as small as an age difference can be important,” Matthew said. “Andrew has a nursing home administrator’s license, he has 10 years of experience, he brings a level of professionalism that I might discount if I think of him as my little brother.”
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