Contractor who protested Hagedorn hospital's closure in letter gets new assignment

LEBANON TOWNSHIP — A contractor at Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital whose letter protesting the facility’s proposed closing led to her being stripped of her duties has landed new work from the state. Susan Hollander Whitman this week went back to working as a guardian representative for patients who are deemed unable to make decisions on their own and who do...

Robert Sciarrino/The Star-LedgerView of Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital which was spared from the budget cuts. Susan Hollander Whitman, a contractor for the hospital, was stripped of her duties after she sent a letter opposing the proposed closure of the hospital. Authorities said she misrepresented her role in the agency. She has been offered a new assignment.

LEBANON TOWNSHIP — A contractor at Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital whose letter protesting the facility’s proposed closing led to her being stripped of her duties has landed new work from the state.

Susan Hollander Whitman this week went back to working as a guardian representative for patients who are deemed unable to make decisions on their own and who do not have family members or friends to represent them. But not at Hagedorn, where she used to represent 19 elderly and incapacitated patients who are now under someone else’s care.

"She was offered an alternate caseload," said Department of Health and Senior Services spokeswoman Donna Leusner. The spokeswoman said Hollander Whitman was offered a similar number of patients, but she declined to say where.

The reinstatement comes about two months after state Sen. Michael Doherty (R-Warren), who opposed Hagedorn’s closing, read Hollander Whitman’s letter aloud in a state Senate hearing. In it, she wrote that closing the 310-bed facility for mostly elderly patients would shift "problems and costs into other areas" and "patients will be hurt in the process."

Hollander Whitman identified herself as a guardian representative for the Office of the Public Guardian, which is part of the state Department of Health and Senior Services. She did not use official stationery, but she used the name of the office and its Trenton post office box in the return address.

The day after Doherty read the letter, Hollander Whitman, who represented about 50 additional patients in other parts of the state and made $37,629 last year, was stripped of her caseload while the Health Department investigated whether she misrepresented herself as an employee of the Office of the Public Guardian. Whitman is actually a contractor and was paid an hourly wage of $28.51.

That led state Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen) to grill Health Commissioner Poonam Alaigh as to whether the investigation was retaliation for speaking out against Gov. Chris Christie’s policies.

"It’s hard for me not to think that there was retaliation involved here. It’s quite troubling, to be honest with you," he said during a Senate Budget Committee hearing.

Leusner said the results of the review are confidential.

"The Department has no comment on its internal review. The internal review resulted in the consultant being offered a caseload," she said. "There was no retaliation whatsoever."

Hagedorn Psychiatic Hospital, which is home to 285 patients, was slated for closure in the 2011 budget Gov. Chris Christie proposed in March, but lawmakers and the administration agreed to keep it open in a budget deal reached Monday.