North Country Nursing & Rehab: Unclean Hallways - NY
Inspectors visiting North Country Nursing & Rehabilitation Center on August 11, 2025, at 4:12 in the afternoon found the dried, foul-smelling streak running down the Unit 200 hallway. They came back the following morning at 8:52 and found it again, or what remained of it, near the elevators. The substance was brown, dried, and odorous on both occasions. The inspection report does not describe any cleanup attempt in between.
The facility's own housekeeping records, which were undated, stated that hallways should be dust mopped and wet mopped. Whether that happened in Unit 200 during those days was a different matter.
When inspectors interviewed Housekeeper #2 on August 14, the worker said they were responsible for sweeping and mopping the hallways every day. Then came the qualifier: they did not always get to them. The housekeeper said they had seen the brown streak near the elevator. They also said that feces on floors was not their job to clean up first. That, they said, fell to nursing staff.
The Infection Preventionist, interviewed later that same day, confirmed the division of labor. Certified nurse aides were responsible for cleaning up feces on the floor, the Infection Preventionist said. Housekeeping would come in afterward to sanitize.
Certified Nurse Aide #4, reached about 15 minutes after that conversation, said the same thing from their end: if they saw feces or urine on the floor, cleaning it up was their responsibility.
So the roles were clear enough, at least in the telling. Someone had seen the streak. Multiple people knew whose job it was. The hallway runs through a unit where residents live, where staff work, where anyone moving between the elevators and the shower room would have walked past it or through it.
The inspection cited the facility under a tag covering the physical environment, the requirement that a nursing home keep its space safe, functional, sanitary, and comfortable for residents, staff, and the public. Inspectors found the violation in one of the facility's three units. The level of harm was listed as minimal harm or potential for actual harm, affecting few residents.
That classification sits at the lower end of the federal scale. It does not mean the finding was minor in what it describes. A smear of feces dried onto a hallway floor in a building where people with limited mobility are bathed, moved, and cared for is not a small thing. The smell alone is a daily condition for anyone on that unit. The floor is a surface that aides kneel near, that wheelchairs roll across, that residents in socks or slippers move through.
The gap between the policy and what inspectors found was not complicated. The housekeeping task sheet said mop daily. The housekeeper said they did not always get to the hallways. The streak was there Monday evening. It was there Tuesday morning.
North Country Nursing & Rehabilitation Center is located in Massena, in St. Lawrence County in the North Country region of upstate New York. The complaint survey ran from August 11 through August 15, 2025.
The facility has not publicly responded to the findings. The inspection record does not include any statement from administration about what corrective steps, if any, were taken after inspectors flagged the hallway on the first day of the survey.
As of the last day of the inspection, the documentation of who saw it, who knew about it, and who was responsible for it was thorough. What was less clear was why, with all of that in place, it took a federal inspector pointing at the floor to make it a problem worth solving.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for North Country Nursing & Rehabilitation Center from 2025-08-15 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Additional Resources
Data source: This article is based on inspection data downloaded directly from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) via Medicare.gov. CMS releases inspection reports in bulk; we publish the findings as documented by state surveyors in the official Form CMS-2567 Statement of Deficiencies.
Plan of correction: The CMS report we receive does not include the facility's plan of correction. Facilities submit plans of correction separately to state survey agencies and those responses may not be reflected in CMS data at the time of publication. The absence of a plan of correction in our data does not mean one was not filed. Readers who want information about corrective steps taken are encouraged to contact the facility directly or their state survey agency.
Corrections may have occurred: Inspection reports reflect conditions observed on the date of the survey. Facilities may have implemented corrections, staffing changes, additional training, or other remediation since the report was issued. We report what CMS provides and encourage readers to seek current information from the facility.
Editorial process: Inspection findings are extracted from CMS source documents and synthesized using AI, reviewed for factual accuracy against the original report by our editorial team.
Corrections: We strive for accuracy in everything we publish. If you believe any fact in this article is incorrect, please contact us with details, and we will review and correct it promptly.
Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: November 3, 2026 · Our methodology
NORTH COUNTRY NURSING & REHABILITATION CENTER in MASSENA, NY was cited for violations during a health inspection on August 15, 2025.
They came back the following morning at 8:52 and found it again, or what remained of it, near the elevators.
Health inspections identify deficiencies that facilities must correct. Violations range from minor documentation issues to serious safety concerns. Review the full report below for specific details and facility response.