EAST HAVEN, Conn. -- The office manager of an East Haven residential care facility has been arrested and charged with altering a patient's file to obstruct a state investigation into the woman's care, police said Thursday.

Melissa Zalinger, 33, of Hamden, was charged with one count of interfering with an officer, a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $2,000 fine.

Zalinger, the office manager at Caroline Manor, wrote false and misleading notes that were added to a patient's file before it was turned over to the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.

The unit received a complaint on Jan. 25, 2007, that the patient had been unnecessarily transported to the hospital three days earlier, the warrant says, and that Caroline Manor refused to allow the patient back when the hospital deemed she didn’t require hospitalization.

Inspectors from the unit encountered difficulty in obtaining her file from Caroline Manor, the warrant states. When the file was received some 20 days after it was first requested, the warrant claims, it contained contrived, backdated notes written by Zalinger after the investigation had begun.

The warrant reports that the notes claim to document telephone calls with representatives of the state Long Term Care Ombudsman's Office about the patient, but one of the representatives in question had left her state job two years before the call was supposedly made.

Zalinger was released on a written promise to appear in New Haven Superior Court, G.A. No. 23, on Sept. 3.

The charge against Zalinger is merely an accusation, authorities said, and she is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The case is being prosecuted by the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in the Chief State's Attorney's Office.