Cooney Healthcare: Assessment Data Failures Cited - MT
Federal health inspectors cited Cooney Healthcare and Rehabilitation in September 2025 for a pattern of failures to encode resident assessment information and send it to Montana state authorities within seven days of each assessment being completed. The violation, classified at a scope and severity level indicating a pattern of problems rather than an isolated lapse, carried no documented harm to residents. But inspectors determined the failures created potential for more than minimal harm.
That distinction matters. Resident assessments are the foundation of care planning in a nursing home. When a facility completes an assessment, it captures a resident's current condition, cognitive status, physical function, and care needs. That data, once transmitted to the state, feeds into the broader oversight system that regulators use to track whether residents are getting appropriate care over time. When transmission is delayed, the picture regulators see is incomplete. Decisions, at the facility level and above it, can rest on information that doesn't reflect what's actually happening to residents.
The violation was tagged F0640, under the category of Resident Assessment and Care Planning Deficiencies. It was listed as past non-compliance, meaning the facility told inspectors it had corrected the problem before the inspection took place, reporting a correction date of August 1, 2025. The inspection itself was conducted September 11, 2025.
Past non-compliance findings carry their own weight. They document that a problem existed, persisted long enough to constitute a pattern, and required the facility to take corrective action. They do not mean the issue never happened or that residents were unaffected during the period the failures occurred.
Cooney Healthcare and Rehabilitation's 20 total deficiencies during this inspection place it in company that warrants attention. A single complaint inspection turning up 20 cited problems is not routine. The full scope of what inspectors found across those 20 citations is not detailed in this report, but the volume alone signals that the September visit was not a clean one.
The facility serves residents who depend on it not just for daily care but for the administrative and clinical processes that connect them to a broader system of oversight and accountability. Assessment data transmission may sound like paperwork. In practice, it is the mechanism by which the state knows who is living in a facility, what their needs are, and whether those needs are being met. A pattern of failures to complete that transmission on time is a pattern of gaps in that accountability.
Montana's long-term care system, like those in most states, relies on nursing homes to self-report through data submissions. The state does not have inspectors in every facility every day. What it has, in large part, is the data facilities send. When that data arrives late, or arrives in batches after a pattern of delays, the state's ability to flag problems early is reduced.
The correction the facility reported, dated more than a month before inspectors arrived, suggests the problem was identified and addressed. Whether the fix holds is something only future inspections will show.
What the September 2025 inspection captured is a facility that, at some point before August of this year, was not meeting a basic data obligation for a pattern of residents, not just once. The inspection record doesn't say how many residents were affected, how long the delays ran, or what assessments were involved. It says the problem was a pattern, that it carried potential for more than minimal harm, and that the facility has since reported correcting it.
For residents and families at Cooney Healthcare, the 20 deficiencies cited this fall are the more complete story. Assessment data transmission is one thread in that picture. The others remain, for now, outside the scope of what this report details. What is clear is that federal inspectors who came to Helena in response to a complaint did not leave with a clean finding. They left with 20 of them.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Cooney Healthcare and Rehabilitation from 2025-09-11 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.
Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: September 22, 2026 · Our methodology
COONEY HEALTHCARE AND REHABILITATION in HELENA, MT was cited for violations during a health inspection on September 11, 2025.
But inspectors determined the failures created potential for more than minimal harm.
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.