NYC NOW - Imminent Danger Ep 2: One Doctor and a Trail of Injured Women

Episode Date: October 14, 2023

We go back in time to uncover why New York state revoked OB-GYN Dr. Thomas J. Byrne’s medical license in the first place. And we meet Donita Henry, who – back in 1990 – was pregnant with her first child and seeing Byrne for prenatal care in Upstate New York. Initially, she trusted Byrne. That would change after she gave birth.Henry was one of 11 patients – a group that includes five pairs of babies and their mothers – the state would later determine were harmed under the care of Byrne in two years. But within about a year of losing his license to practice in New York, he obtained one in another state. We meet the man who recommended that Byrne be allowed to continue practicing.This series was supported by the Pulitzer Center.To hear our earlier episodes, find Episode 1: Wrongful Death here. 

Welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jene Pierre. It's Saturday morning, and that means it's time for episode two of our five-part series called Imminent Danger, one doctor and a Trail of Injured Women, produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. Here's our investigative editor at WNYC and got the missed, Christopher Worth. Hey, everyone. If you haven't listened to part one of this series, I suggest you go back and listen to last Saturday's episode on NYC Now or at gathamist.com. In that episode, reporter Karen Chakurgy told us a story about a 34-year-old mother named Amy Lamb, who died at Harlem Hospital in New York City after giving birth in 2016.

It was difficult to see Amy in a casket. She should have been there. She should have been alive enjoying her newborn. What we learned is that one of the doctors who treated Amy at Harlem Hospital, an OBJYN named Thomas Byrne, had a long history of medical malpractice, and that he'd lost his medical license in New York in the early 90s, only to get it back years later after practicing in other states. He went to Oklahoma and he went to New Mexico

and lawsuits followed him to every state. Karen has tracked Burns' career. and investigated what his story tells us about the failures of the American medical system to stop doctors with questionable track records. This is episode two, license revoked. And a quick heads up, this story deals with detailed accounts of medical injury, loss, and grief. Here's Karen. The details I learned about Dr. Burns' past were troubling.

New York State health officials had declared him to be an imminent danger in the 90s. I wanted to understand what happened to earn him that label. While I was digging through court records, I came across a list of names, patients that had settled lawsuits with Byrne back then. It was just a list of names and settlement amounts, no other details. But I tracked down one of those former patients, a woman named Danita Henry to see if I could learn more. She was pretty surprised to get a message for me. Because I actually, to be perfectly honest with you, when you get a message out of the blue, I did look you up, and I'm like, okay, she's legit.

You know, I don't know you. You don't know me. And obviously there's things that you never forget. But I'm not really sure I wanted to dredge up all these memories either. What I learned is that Danita's case was central to Dr. Byrne losing his medical license more than 30 years ago. And it's amazing when I started talking about the stuff that you do remember. She actually testified about what happened to her and her daughter, Megan, as part of a series of hearings in a New York state investigation.

It looked into whether Dr. Byrne was fit to practice medicine. There's an incredibly detailed public record of what happened with a number of patients, and at the time, the hearings were a big deal. There were 12 of them, 12 sessions held over the span of four months in Rochester, New York. A local paper there, the Democrat and Chronicle, followed the investigation pretty closely and ran headlines like Obstetrician faces charges of negligence and state panel urges license be revoked.

You know, considering what he did to my daughter and other children, I just remember being told that Megan's case was pretty much a straw that broke the camel's back that they were watching this guy. What did happen in your case? Okay, so on May 3rd of 1990, I went in for a regular checkup. Back in 1990, Donita was 25 years old,

and she was living in the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York. She was nine months pregnant and seeing Dr. Byrne for care. This was my first child, so I did not know what to expect. I'm going to trust my doctor, obviously. And he had told me my blood pressure was high, and he said, okay, if you don't go into labor, I need to induce you. At 8 p.m. that same night,

Donita was admitted to Newark-Wain Community Hospital. I do remember that I just wasn't going into labor, and they had to break my water. I know that's sometimes done to speed delivery, but are there any risks to doing that? Yeah, well, if labor goes on for a long time after breaking the water, the mother and the baby can develop an infection.

basically because bacteria can then get into the uterus. And how long had Danita gone after Byrne broke her water? Well, 24 hours later, she still hadn't given birth. And by that point, her temperature shot up to 102.2. The baby's heart rate was rising. And Danita was still not fully dilated. The state's public record says Dr. Byrne told her to start pushing. anyway, which an expert witness for the health department would later say was the wrong thing to do.

Were you there in the room when all of this was unfolding? Yes. Michelle Durham was a labor and delivery nurse at the time. She was working that night, taking care of Donita and assisting Dr. Byrne. What was it like in there? From what I recall, I had an impending feeling of, I don't want to sound dramatic. but doom. Like this is not going the way it should.

Her temperature started to creep up. She developed fetal tachycardia and she wasn't showing the cervical change that she should have. And I, you know, I think that when you do something in medicine long enough, you develop like a sixth sense. And there are certain cases and bad outcomes specifically.

You just don't forget. Can you describe Dr. Byrne? I mean, I'm interested in what your impressions of him were. I would say compared to the many physicians I had worked with, I don't know how to say this. You know, he was kind of a cowboy. He would just be much more aggressive in the care of a patient. And I think it made a lot of people uncomfortable. Michelle also testified as a witness in the investigation into Dr. Byrne. She refers to Donita as patient E because the state records anonymized patients to protect their privacy. So prior to the case in question, he already sort of had an established reputation.

I mean, because patient E, whose case I was involved in was not the first bad outcome. I mean, there had been many previous bad outcome. Just after 10 p.m. that night that Danita was in the hospital, records show her temperature continued to climb to 104.4. An OBGYN who I asked to review this record told me that kind of temperature for a patient in labor is like a five-alarm fire, because it is a sign that an infection is most likely brewing and that the baby needs to be delivered as soon as possible. Dr. Byrne initially ordered an emergency C-section, but 15 minutes after that, he started using a vacuum extractor to deliver the baby instead. He liked the vacuum extractor, and he used it a lot. I remember that distinctly.

You know, when you are appropriately using a vacuum extractor, it's an assistance. and the baby should be easily delivered and there shouldn't be trauma. What were you witnessing in that moment? I was witnessing way, way more traction and pull than should have ever been done. Karen, just so unclear, what exactly is a vacuum extractor and what's the risk in using it in the way that she's describing? Yeah, a vacuum extractor essentially is a tool with a suction cup at the end that a doctor puts on the baby's head and then pulls while the mother pushes the baby out. If it's used improperly, though, that can hurt the baby and even cause brain damage. I knew that vacuum extractor should never have been put on that infant's head.

That's just, that was like totally clear to you in that moment. 100%. I just remember thinking I can't. believe he's pulling and that I needed to make sure I documented very proficiently and very accurately, even if it contradicted what he wrote. Because 32 years ago, you didn't question the physician. The physician made decisions and as a nurse, you carried them out. The baby, Megan, was born at 10.40 p.m. By that point, records show that Donita did have an infection. she was in severe septic shock and that Dr. Byrne hadn't prescribed enough antibiotics to fight the infection.

I do remember I lost a lot of blood giving birth to her. Sorry. She was tiny. In fact, when they weighed her after they pumped her full of fluid, she was probably just six pounds. So I remember giving birth to her. Not knowing what was going on, this time I had no clue. Donita says that in that moment she turned to Dr. Byrne. And I had said to him, and I remember this because I'm thinking, wow, okay, that's pretty cold.

I said to him, how is she doing? He said, to be perfectly honest with you, not very good. And I thought, whoa, okay. and I can remember somebody commenting on all the blood, my blood that was on the floor. She was born May 4th at night, and she died May 5th. Doctors later determined that the infection had also spread to Megan. She suffered cardiopulmonary arrest, birth, asphyxia, and profound sepsis. She was kept alive for just 23 hours.

It was hell, obviously. I didn't have my daughter. I was told that had he done a C-section, and it was discussed, had he done a C-section like an hour or two before, I would still have my daughter, and she would be fine. I remember saying to the nurses who were there, my peers, saying, do you all understand that this did not have to happen? This was preventable.

Do you all understand that? I left that night, and I'm pretty sure that might have been my last shift I ever worked there. You just didn't want to go back. Nope. So do we have any sense of how Dr. Byrne reacted to what happened to Danita and her baby? I did reach out to Dr. Byrne for comment on Donita's story specifically as well as other cases, and he hasn't responded. But I know from records that he continued to deliver babies at this particular hospital. after Megan's death. And Donita told me that she spoke with Dr. Byrne sometime after this all happened.

I don't know if he contacted me or if I contacted him. I remember meeting with him after office hours and him going through my records with me trying to explain what happened. And I remember saying something about, you know, I had told him before, I can't keep the prenatal vitamins. down, I keep throwing him up. And he basically said, well, that didn't help the situation. You know, kind of like blaming me, I fell at that time. You're telling me because I kept throwing up my prenatal vitamins, my daughter died. One of the things that sticks out so much to me about Danita's experience is the aftermath of her daughter's death because she was trying to make sense of what happened to her and her

daughter. And at least initially, she didn't yet think that Dr. Byrne was necessarily to blame for what happened. My mother kept telling me, Donita, there's something going on, there's something doesn't feel right. And I kept saying, no, it wasn't his fault. It wasn't his fault. She's like, I'm telling you, you need to dig further. Donita's mother had a friend who worked at that local paper, the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, the one that was covering the state's investigation. And they managed to get transcripts of people who testified. This is while the whole hearing or trial or whatever it was was going on in Rochester,

she said to my mom, you and Danita need to come up and read these transcripts. And that's when I found out it was him. Donita told me that reading those transcripts is what motivated her. to testify in the state's investigation herself because it confirmed for her that Dr. Byrne was at fault. I was reeling from the realization that my doctor, so I trusted with mine and my child's life, was the cause of this whole thing.

The state found other cases besides Donitas, a total of 11 patients, which included five pairs of mothers and babies and one woman who got gynecological surgery. The state ultimately concluded all of them had been harmed by Byrne in a span of two years. In all, three babies died, including Megan. Two other babies suffered severe brain damage. The state charged Dr. Byrne with using a vacuum extractor improperly in three of those cases,

although not in Donitas. But the state did find that Dr. Byrne deviated from acceptable medical care 15 times while caring for her, which a medical expert for the state testified caused or contributed to her daughter's death. And did Byrne testify in these hearings? He did. I wasn't able to get access to his testimony through the health department, so I can't tell you what he said. Okay. But the state did reference it in a summary of the hearings.

I'll just read you this part. It says, quote, Respondent's testimony was purely self-serving and replete with misrepresentations and false statements. And they also say, quote, respondent repeatedly demonstrated an unmitigated lack of the basic knowledge and understanding necessary to practice medicine, as well as a complete disregard for the well-being of his patients.

Respondent is devoid of any semblance of professional integrity and honesty. So when the state stripped burn of his medical license at that time, was there much chance of him ever getting it back? So New York's Board of Regents voted to revoke his medical license, and that decision went into effect on November 20, 1991. That made it impossible for him to practice. anywhere in the state. But to answer your question, that day, a health department spokesperson was quoted in the Democrat

and Chronicle saying it would be very difficult for Byrne to get his license back. Not impossible, but very difficult. But in 2014, that's exactly what he did. He got his license back in New York. So this is news to you, it sounds like. You're surprised to hear that. Oh, yeah. I'm very disappointed.

I cannot believe if they did this. Because it wasn't like Megan was the only child that he did anything to. And I almost died. You know, he doesn't need to be practicing. Considering what officials concluded after their investigation, I wanted to know why New York had given him his medical license back so many years later. And to figure that out, I felt like I needed to know what happened in the time between what happened to Danita and Amy's death at Harlem Hospital 26 years later. One of the first things I found is that about a year after New York revoked Burns license, he managed to get another license elsewhere in another state.

how could somebody who had their license revoked under the saddest of circumstances be able to continue? I mean, I have to assume that there has to be a paper trail of other poor outcomes. Coming up, we meet the person Dr. Byrne turned to after he lost his medical license.

Practicing physicians are expected to be infallible and make zero mistakes 100%. of the time. It's one of the few professions where that is absolutely true. That's next. So, Karen, just to recap some of the things that we've heard, Burn loses his license in 1991. Michelle and Danita testify against him in New York State's hearings. Where did he end up after that? Yeah, so about a year after he loses his New York license, he gets one in New Mexico. I did manage to get a whole bunch of documents from the New Mexico Medical Board through a public records request. And between those records and others from other state medical boards over 600 pages,

I was able to piece together what happened. The first thing I want to tell you about is what Dr. Byrne did in that year between New York and New Mexico because he went through a pretty unique program that seems to have played a really big role in his being able to continue practicing. I tracked down the guy who created it, an educational psychologist named William Grant. I work on the whole issue of how people learn, why they learn, why they don't learn, how to make their learning experience better. The program was called the Physician Prescribed Educational Program. It was based at SUNY Upstate Medical University, that's State University of New York, in Syracuse.

And it was for doctors who, for all sorts of reasons, were in some kind of trouble. mainly doctors dealing with substance abuse, but other issues too. Do you think it's fair to think of the program as kind of like a last chance or like last attempt for doctors? For some of them it was. If you're a physician and lose your license, nobody wants you. You can't go in the hospital and work as a lobotomist. You can't go do other things that are medically related because the lawyers, will say we don't want the liability of dealing with someone who was a physician and lost their license.

You're meeting them not in the best moment of their career. Yeah, no kidding. Doctors would go through a series of evaluations, some retraining if need be, and then William would write up a final report and make a recommendation about whether he thought the physician was fit to continue practicing. We had to explain, we ain't saving you. And whatever we find is what we're going to report. We're not here to gloss over anything. It is what it is.

And that's what gets reported. The program wasn't huge. William told me that roughly 300 physicians went through it over the 10 or so years it existed. It no longer is running. One of the issues with physicians, especially in the American public, is that practicing physicians are expected to be infallible and make zero mistakes 100% of the time. It's one of the few professions where that is absolutely true.

And public will not countenance any errors from physicians, and it doesn't matter what the error is and whose fault it is. Were there physicians that you struggled with, or what for you, was it always kind of very clear because you had a data-focused approach? No, there's always physicians you struggle with. And the more you do it, the harder it gets because the implications of your decisions become clearer. The magnitude of the implications of your decisions. And so even the ones that I would recommend go back and practice medicine, those are no easy decisions.

Those are really no easy decisions. Why was it not easy for physicians who you were recommending that they return to practice? Because you don't know. I mean, it's like anything else. Yeah, we think we got them. We think we've got it fixed. We think we've got it sorted out. And they seem to be doing very well.

And they've got a lot of support system and so on. But you just don't know. You just don't have a clue. were you able to find out where Dr. Byrne fell in all of this? So William didn't want to talk about any particular doctors with me who went through his program to protect their privacy. That was one of the conditions of our interview. Okay. But I did manage to get some records from the Oklahoma State Medical Board another state Byrne would go on to practice in.

Those records show that the program was pretty involved. Byrne completed a number of exercises and evaluations, including writing an extensive 40-page paper on the proper use of vacuum extractors. And we should just say that's improper use of a vacuum extractor. That's one of the reasons Byrne was stripped of his license in the first place. Yeah, that's right. And in the end, William recommended that Dr. Byrne should go back to practice, as he did before, meaning practice with a medical license that doesn't have. any restrictions on it. William writes to the Department of Health in New York, and he also eventually writes to the boards in other states where Byrne goes on to practice. I have one of the letters,

and his take on what happened in New York is basically that, yes, Dr. Byrne had some issues, but that he was also really overworked and that he just had taken on too many patients and couldn't keep up. So this is the thing that helps burn to keep practicing. Yeah, as far as I can tell, New Mexico gives him a license not too long after. And he starts practicing in a rural area about an hour or so from the border, the Mexican border. He bounces around to a few other places in the state. And then in 1997, so six years after he lost his license in New York, he applies for a medical license in Oklahoma.

I actually got a written statement that Byrne submitted as part of that application. And besides depositions, this is actually one of the few instances where I've been able to hear him in his own words, since he hasn't responded to any of my requests for an interview. It says, quote, I began to work in a small town called Alamagordo, New Mexico. I was refused hospital privileges but practiced in an office called Thunderbird OBGYN. I worked there for a year and decided to do a mini residency at the University of New Mexico in order to be able to restart hospital practice. Is that a big deal being refused privileges, redoing a residency in the way that he's describing here? Well, I think what it shows is that Byrne was really trying to continue practicing, but that it wasn't. necessarily easy. He goes on to say, quote, I have made mistakes in my life and in my practice

of medicine. I have strived both with self-honesty and hard work to correct the mistakes I have made and to better educate myself so that I can make fewer errors in the practice of medicine. New Mexico took a chance in granting me a licensed practice in 1992. I took that chance and rewarded the state by bringing good care to the patients I cared for, both at the university and in rural areas of the state I have visited and practiced in. Please call any or all of the places where I have worked. They will uniformly give me good recommendations, both as a person and as a physician. Please allow me the same chance to practice in Oklahoma. You will not be disappointed if you do. In our next episode, what happens in Oklahoma?

I held on to these records all this time. I always knew somebody somewhere was going to get in touch with me someday because of what he did to me. And we take a closer look at what state medical boards do to vet doctors. You know, somewhere you have to hope that they're all being honest when they renew their license. and answer questions. Imminent danger, one doctor in a trail of injured women was reported by Karen Shakurgy and edited by me, Christopher Worth. It was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.

Our executive producer is Abe Carrillo. We had additional editing by Sikon Akpan, Stephanie Clary, and Sean Boutich. Ethan Corey is our researcher and fact-checker. Jared Paul is our sound engineer. He also wrote our theme music. We had additional reporting and producing from Jacqueline Jeffrey Willinsky, Owen Agnew, and Catherine Roberts. Special thanks in this episode. Go to Rob Christensen, Karen Frillman, Dr. Catherine Kula, Dr. Benedict Landrin, Maggie Stapleton, and Adam Ramanda.

Thanks for listening. Be sure to check out NYC Now every Saturday morning for the next three weeks to hear the continuation of imminent danger. I'm Jean-A Pierre and we'll be back with the local headlines first thing Monday morning. Until then, have a great weekend.