Cooney Healthcare: ADL Care Failures Reported - MT
Federal inspectors documented both failures during a complaint inspection completed December 31, 2025.
The first resident, identified in inspection records only as Resident 20, told inspectors on December 30 that a staff member — referred to in the report as Staff Member R — had encouraged her to walk without her walker or gait belt on the weekend of December 27 and 28. She said she had not been cleared by therapy to walk without either one. The fear was direct and personal: she told inspectors she was afraid for her safety during transfers and walking.
Staff Member S, interviewed the same afternoon, confirmed the record. A gait belt and four-wheeled walker were required per the therapy evaluation for any transfers or walking that weekend. Nobody had told Staff Member R otherwise — or so the record showed.
Staff Member R told inspectors a different story. He said he encouraged Resident 20 to walk without the equipment because he had been told during shift report that she did not need them. Shift report, passed verbally from one staff member to the next, had apparently contradicted what the therapy evaluation required. Inspectors flagged a related failure in the resident's care plan, noting it lacked the information Staff Member R would have needed to know what was actually required.
A walker and gait belt exist for a reason. For a resident who is not cleared to walk without them, being told to do so anyway is not a minor miscommunication.
The second case unfolded on Christmas Day. A family member, identified as NF1, came to the facility on December 25 to pick up Resident 21 for the holiday. When she arrived, Resident 21 had not received her morning care. She was wet. It was 12:30 in the afternoon.
A written statement from Staff Member T, dated December 29, described what had happened that morning. Resident 21 had been very sleepy and not waking up. Staff Member T said she had been told during shift report that Resident 21 had a rough night, hadn't been sleeping well, and she assumed the sleepiness was connected to that. She let her sleep.
Staff Member T wrote that she was upset with herself when the family came in and was upset. She said she should have been more aggressive in waking Resident 21 and getting her toileted.
The phrase "more aggressive" is the language of someone who understood, after the fact, what the morning had required. Resident 21 was dependent on staff for her basic care. On Christmas morning, that care did not happen. Her family found her wet in bed, hours into a day that was supposed to begin with a holiday visit.
Inspectors cited the facility for failing to provide activities of daily living care to meet the needs of dependent residents, a finding that covered both Resident 20 and Resident 21 out of 25 residents sampled during the inspection. The harm level was classified as minimal, a regulatory designation that does not capture what it meant to be Resident 21's family member walking into that room, or Resident 20 standing in a hallway over the weekend, afraid, without the equipment her own therapy team had said she needed.
The care plan failures for both residents were cited separately. What the reports show, taken together, is a facility where the written record of what a resident needs was not reliably reaching the people responsible for providing it, and where the gap between what was documented and what was done fell on the residents themselves.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Cooney Healthcare and Rehabilitation from 2025-12-31 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Download the official CMS inspection PDF from Medicare.gov
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 19, 2026 · Our methodology
COONEY HEALTHCARE AND REHABILITATION in HELENA, MT was cited for violations during a health inspection on December 31, 2025.
Federal inspectors documented both failures during a complaint inspection completed December 31, 2025.
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.