Mental-hospital doctors among N.J.'s best-paid - Trenton (NJ) Enquirer

By Elisa Ung

TRENTON - The highest-paid New Jersey state employee in 2006 was someone you have probably never heard of.

It was not Gov. Corzine. It was not the chief justice of the state Supreme Court. It was not the state treasurer, the attorney general, or any of the cabinet members.

It was Lourdes Montezon, a clinical psychiatrist who admits and treats mentally ill patients at the Sen. G.W. Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital in Hunterdon County. Last year, Montezon made roughly $277,000, about $116,500 of that by working extra shifts.

The second-highest-paid employee is another clinical psychiatrist, Mohammad Bari, who works at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and pulled in $263,615 last year, $103,077 of that above his base salary.

In fact, doctors at the state's five mental hospitals made up 85 of the state's top 100 highest-paid employees last year, according to an Inquirer analysis of state payroll records. Many of them made tens of thousands of dollars above their base salaries.

Officials said the numbers highlight the crowding and high staff turnover in New Jersey's mental hospitals. Pam Ronan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services, said that it was difficult to recruit doctors for the demanding work in the packed hospitals, but that the state was hiring more. Ronan added that all extra time is worked voluntarily.

Still, the amount of extra shifts troubles Robert Davison, who chaired a task force convened by former Gov. Richard J. Codey in 2004 to evaluate the state's mental-health system. Davison said that he had no problem with the doctors' base salaries - which are in line with national data - but that the highest amounts of extra time "sounds abusive to me."

"I would be concerned about the doctor getting too tired," said Davison, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Essex County. "I would wonder how many hours she put in and if that was in the best interest of quality care. It also seems to me that there should have been better planning to avoid that overtime situation."

When reached by telephone at Hagedorn last week, Montezon said she felt perfectly capable of regularly working up to 72 hours a week, on some days from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. She said she enjoys her work and even works an additional eight hours a week at the Family Guidance Center of Warren County.

"Believe me, if this work was tiring, I would be the first one to quit," she said. She said that if patients did not need her during a later shift, she used much of it to catch up on required paperwork.

Montezon said that she does not need to work so many hours for financial reasons, but that "I get bored when I'm not working." She added that many of her extra shifts last year were due to emergencies, or coworkers' illnesses or injuries.

Ronan, the Human Services spokeswoman, said that the state did not let doctors work more than 75 hours a week or 16 hours in any one day, and that hospital chiefs would pull off any employee who appeared too tired to work.

The hospitals require a medical professional on duty around the clock, and Ronan said that duty made up most of the extra shifts. It pays a flat $75 an hour, about the same as Montezon's and Bari's normal rate.

Both Ronan and Davison, the former task force chief, said the state lacks suitable housing for the mentally ill, which pushes them into state-run hospitals and leads to overcrowding. Corzine's proposed budget includes $13.3 million for more such housing, Ronan said.

The mental hospitals have been in the news because of two killings since July at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Ancora, Camden County, which Ronan said is a major focus of state efforts to help discharge treated patients into the community.

Calls to the doctors' union, Communications Workers of America Local 1040, were not returned.

Bob Master, the CWA's regional legislative and political director, echoed that it was difficult to recruit people to work in the hospitals. "These are very, very difficult jobs," Master said, adding that the extra hours were "what's needed to meet the demands of the institution."

Pennsylvania pays its psychiatrists a base salary that is about $40,000 less than New Jersey's. But six of the state's psychiatrists made between $80,744 and $111,200 in additional overtime, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health.