Beloved Greystone CEO retires

Janet Monroe, the beloved CEO known for navigating Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital out of its darkest hour and into its new Koch Avenue facility seven years ago, has retired.

An inspirational figure on the state mental health landscape for four decades, Monroe, now 60, is described by her colleagues as “the queen of calm,” a champion of patients, and a skilled change agent known for her people-first initiatives.

“Our biggest accomplishment at Greystone,” Monroe said, “is that we understand running hospitals and taking good care of patients, so they get to recovery, takes a village.”

Monroe’s career has spanned a seminal shift in the treatment of mental illness — from institutionalizing people for a lifetime to returning them, stabilized and ready, to the community to continue their recovery.

“I leave behind a superior work force who have their minds in the right direction,” Monroe said. “Their challenge now will be to continue moving people toward independence.”

In her first job at Greystone, Monroe worked in the laundry room. It wasn’t until she received her nursing degree in 1976 — she’d go on to get two business-related degrees — that she landed a job as a nurse. As the years went by, she climbed the administrative ladder.

The route Monroe followed helped her ultimately succeed, suggested Jennifer Velez, who was commissioner of the state Department of Human Services before resigning this past February.

“Part of the reason why Janet was so attuned to the staffs’ needs, concerns, and camaraderie,” Velez said, “is because she had worked at every level.”

Brink of closure

By 2000, when Gov. Christie Whitman ordered the hospital closed and assigned Greg Roberts, former head of the New Jersey Office of State Hospital Management to the task, Monroe was assistant director in the nursing department.

Roberts, who was CEO at Greystone from 2000 to 2003, rebuilt the management team, making Monroe deputy CEO.

“She became the supervisor of people who had been her peers, and that’s a difficult position to be in,” Roberts said. “But she did it very well. She’s got a very calm demeanor. She’s very smart, and all her values are in the right places: she’s very patient centered.”

Greystone has been doing so well for a number of years, Roberts said, but it wasn’t that long ago when the state psychiatric hospital was in “a difficult, terrible situation.”

Opened in the 1870s, the State Lunatic Asylum at Morris Plains received its first 342 patients. It took its current name in 1924, according to one history. At one time state of the art, Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital went on to struggle with issues of overcrowding, health, and cleanliness, and, at one point, even a typhoid fever outbreak.

In the 1990s, Greystone was plagued with high-profile problems, including the escapes of patients, some of them criminals. It made headlines dealing with alleged staff abuse, pregnant female patients and decaying buildings.

“When I arrived at Greystone, a challenge was issued to the staff: if they wanted to keep the hospital open, they needed to do a better job,” recalled Roberts, who has been chief of Oregon State Hospital since 2010. “They did, and we had a very nice, positive turnaround.

“When I was in New Jersey, I was frequently the person the state sent into very difficult situations to stop the bleeding and begin the transformation,” he added. “Over a three-year period, we got things stabilized and made the turnaround. It’s difficult, but it’s easier to do than to sustain the change.”

A hard job

In 2003, Roberts left Greystone and went to his next assignment at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. He believed Monroe, who knew Greystone inside and out and had been part of the change, was the best person to take the reins as CEO.

“Janet doesn’t give herself enough credit for sustaining the forward movement and continuing the improvements in the hospital,” he said. “I was there for three years. She’s been there for 12, and that’s a long time for the CEO of a psychiatric hospital.”

How Greystone conducts its business now, he explained, is nothing like how it used to be.

Monroe had a “very, very tough job,” Velez said. Yet, she never lost her composure or her focus.

“She’s the queen of calm — so calm, so measured, but really engaged,” Velez recalled. “She used to always send me little handwritten personal note cards at various times.”

Velez recalled being in the new 458,000-square-foot hospital that opened on Koch Avenue in 2008, with an entourage from the state. Monroe was leading the group through the building, showing changes between the old hospital complex, now demolished, and the new one.

Suddenly, due to a significant storm, the hospital lost power. Monroe shifted gears in two sentences, Velez recalled, making a call to say, “We’re in contingency emergency planning right now,” before returning to the state contingent and continuing the tour.

“She didn’t get rattled,” Velez said. “Around her, everyone knew there was no need to panic.”

Those around Monroe included the patients, who she always treated with extraordinary dignity and respect, according to Velez.

Indeed Kevin Martone, former deputy commission for the state Department of Human Services from 2005 to 2011, called Monroe “grace under pressure.”

Proudest moment

Monroe identified her best day on the job as CEO as July 16, 2008 — the day the patients were moved from the old hospital building to the new complex on Koch Avenue.

“We planned and practiced,” she said. “I give John Whitenack a lot of credit for a great deal of that. He was our COO at the time. We got to the new hospital and nobody was hurt and everybody was fine and everything went according to plan. I don’t think I ever saw a smoother transition. Everybody took a deep breath and said, ‘This is great! Everybody’s in.’ ”

If anything proved that running a psychiatric hospital requires a whole community, she said, that day certainly did.

So-called people-first recovery programs in the new facility are a testament to Monroe’s careful attention to patients and staff, sources say. She was instrumental in developing the facility’s treatment mall — 21 rooms used for various activities — as well as the equine and horticulture therapy programs, and more.

Eileen Griffith, a longtime member of the Greystone Park Association and Concerned Families of Greystone, two grassroots groups, has been impressed with Monroe from the start.

“In all my dealings with her, she was a very empathic CEO, very committed to our patients, and very appreciative of our staff when they did their job well, such as when they showed up during bad weather,” Griffith said. “She was always complimenting them and thanking them for their dedication to our patients.”

Many times, Griffith recalled, she would leave the hospital at 7 p.m. and see Monroe’s car still in the parking lot.

“And I knew she was there early in the morning,” Griffith said.

A nurse first

Monroe said being a nurse profoundly affected her leadership style.

“Nurses are interested in individual people and understand that each person has different needs,” she explained. “Being a nurse helped me see that I couldn’t just lump everything together — ‘The majority says’ or ‘This is what’s always happened’ — because I know each person has different needs and different ideas about what their recovery will look like.”

Also, she said, nurses are compassionate people with a lot of knowledge of the role of medications and other treatments in a person’s staying well.

“All that has helped drive me as the CEO,” she said.

Raymond Gray, who has worked at Greystone for 29 years and served as deputy CEO under Monroe, will be acting CEO until a replacement is named, according to Elizabeth Connolly, acting commissioner of the state Department of Human Services.

Today Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital is a 510-bed facility. Another 50 patients live in cottages on the premises before transitioning to the community, officials said. A total of 1,250 staffers work there in addition to 200 hundred people employed hourly.

Lorraine Ash: 973-428-6660; lash@dailyrecord.com