A company with an unusually close relationship to former County Executive Robert Janiszewski sought a contract renewal to supply consulting services to the Meadowview Psychiatric Hospital despite a year’s lapse in services to the facility and despite the freeholder’s termination of their contract last August.
Janus Solutions, which employs Laurie Rankin, a former spokesperson for Janiszewski and Geoffrey Perselay – former county administrator under Janiszewski in the late 1980s and early 1990s – has asked the freeholders to renew a contract which expired a year ago.
The contract with Janus Solutions, which has offered a variety of services to the county-operated facility in Secaucus for nearly a decade, was terminated last August after a series of inquiries into the results of its accomplishments.
The firm was hired to help the facility get through various state and federal certification processes, but the freeholders began to question the continued spending in December 2000, after the facility seemed no closer to achieving these ends. The Freeholders’ Health Committee, fearful that they were funding a contract that had no end in site, decided to review the situation.
Freeholder Barry Dugan said he had visited the hospital in December 2000 and was told the inspection would be done within six months, and questioned why the county was giving a year contract to the firm for six months. Assured that the facility would be ready for a June 2001 inspection, the county agreed to give Janus a six-month renewal. When the firm cancelled the proposed federal inspection of the facility, freeholders balked, and began to question more closely the progress the company had made. Freeholder Bill O’Dea, the most vocal critic of the company, asked several times for a complete report by the firm of its activities since it began operations at the facility.
In July 2001, O’Dea and Freeholder Nidia Davila-Colon called for a review of the process and asked for reports from the last five years to determine what progress had been made in bringing the facility up to standard, and why Janus had not succeeded in doing so in more than five years.
O’Dea says he did finally receive the reports, recommendations and written correspondence between the company and county, but that these only confirmed Janus’ lack of progress.
"We got box loads, but Janus didn’t seem to make any progress over the years," O’Dea said. "That’s why we pushed to have the company show us some progress or for the administration to seek another firm."
After granting the company an additional extension, the county eventually severed dealings with the firm in Aug. 2001.
Part of the freeholders’ concerns with the contract came during the same summer when another firm doing work for the county at Meadowview reported serious problems with the facility after the death of a patient. An investigation of by the Freeholders’ Health Committee found numerous areas of concern, from lack of nursing sheets and no cardiac life support certifications to various paperwork problems. Hospital officials later sought to remove the company that blew the whistle on these problems. The whistle blower was eventually removed at the recommendation of the hospital administrator, another Janiszewski appointment.
"That was supposed to solve all the problems. It didn’t," O’Dea said during a telephone interview this week.
Is this really a renewal?
This week, freeholders tried to find out if Janus Solutions actually continued to work at the hospital past the Aug. 31, 2001 end of the contract, and whether or not payment for the unauthorized service was included in the renewal.
The county executive’s office is asking for a $167,000 contract with Janus to provide clinical expertise to allow the facility to meet requirements for the second phase of accreditation.
Carol Ann Wilson, director of the Hudson County Department of Human Services, who had frequent whispered conferences at Tuesday’s freeholder meeting with David Drummler, advisor for the county executive’s office, positively said Janus officials had not been on campus after the contract expired, despite claims by O’Dea that they had.
But Tom Blatner, founder of Janus Solutions, said the company had remained at Meadowview until some time in October to finish up work there. While the current contract does not include the bill for that time, Blatner said fees for the additional work amounted to $29,000. No bill was sent to the county, he said, calling it a good faith gesture that the county would later repay it.
Blatner, former director of the state’s Child Protective Services Agency, said he has had an ongoing professional relationship with the hospital since 1975.
O’Dea pressed to know why Wilson did not know that Janus was still at the hospital during that additional time. Freeholder Sal Vega defused the potential conflict by saying the county’s short-term renewal of the contract during that period left many people confused as to when the contract actually ended.
There is work yet to be done
In attempting to explain why the contract with Janus Solutions should be renewed, Wilson said the facility still needs services in order to become certified, and that Janus Solutions’ long history with the facility gave it an edge over other possible consulting companies. She said that Janus had successfully brought the facility through a variety of other certification processes, including the first phase of the federal Joint Commission Accreditation of Health Organizations, the second part of which it was working on when the county discontinued its services last year. But Wilson could not guarantee the facility would receive accreditation under the proposed contract, partly because of the gap in service requires the company to update the facility’s policies and procedure’s manual, and partly because the date of inspection is set by JCAHO, not the county.
"I’m sure we will be in a position to request an inspection," she told the freeholders.
This could mean that freeholders – skeptical in the past about the continuing contracts issued to Janus – might have to renew the contract again next year before the certification gets renewedl.
O’Dea and other freeholders have often pressed Wilson and others about when the need for Janus would cease. Wilson in her report this week said that need might never end, since the facility would constantly need to meet accreditation inspections, but the yearly cost could diminish. As an example, she noted that even when the facility receives its JCAHO certification, the county would have to begin updating the facility within a year and a half to meet the next inspection.
"This is an ongoing process," she said.
O’Dea also noted that the year lapse in the contract disqualified this as a renewal, and said the matter then fell under the county’s requirement to seek other proposals.
While Wilson said the firm’s experience saved the county money over other firms – since a new firm would have to "come up to speed" on the conditions at the hospital – O’Dea said this edge could allow Janus to offer a less expensive contract.
"As it is now, we have no way to determine if the cost of this contract is competitive," O’Dea said.