Janae Pierre: Welcome to NYC NOW, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Janae Pierre. Happy New Year. Here's your news headlines from Michael Hill.

Michael Hill: New year, new Laws. New York's statewide hourly minimum wage is now $15.50 cents, but $16.50 in New York City, Westchester County, and Long Island. There are also new penalties for skipping the fare on MTA buses and trains. Starting this weekend, the state DMV will enforce a new penalty point structure for driving violations. Also, starting today, New York residents on certain health plans will no longer have copays for insulin. Another new law requires private employers to provide paid time off for pregnant New Yorkers to get prenatal care.

Another law requires gyms to issue cancellations within 10 days of members' request. The city Buildings Department is encouraging property owners and construction companies to secure their buildings, their sites, and equipment in anticipation of high winds. The Department of Buildings says it'll do random spot checks of construction sites across the city and if necessary, issue stop orders and other fines. The MTA says it will not allow empty tractor-trailers and tandem trucks on its bridges. It starts at 3:00 this afternoon till 10:00 PM Thursday due to the high winds. That's the Bronx, Whitestone, Cross Bay, Henry Hudson, Marine Parkway, Robert F. Kennedy, Throgs Neck, and Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.

Yes, high winds today. Also, alternate side parking is suspended. We don't have to pay the parking meters. 50° and cloudy now with a wind advisory later with some winds up to 55 miles an hour. Slim chance of showers this afternoon, cloudy and 50°, the temperatures falling to the mid-°40s, and gusty. Tomorrow, mostly sunny and °40, beginning a cold stretch.

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Janae Pierre: A little over a year ago, we published an investigation into an OB/GYN who had been stripped of his medical license in the 90s after a state health department investigation found he'd harmed several patients. His license was later restored in New York, but there's been some recent developments in the story. We'll dive in after the break.

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Janae Pierre: What if you learned your doctor had a long track record of medical malpractice lawsuits and scrutiny from health officials? How would you even know about that track record? Those are some of the questions at the center of WNYC's podcast series Imminent Danger: One Doctor and a Trail of Injured Women, which was just honored with a front page award from the News Women's Club of New York. It's an investigation we published back in 2023.

It focused on an OB/GYN named Thomas Byrne, who was stripped of his medical license in New York in the early 90s after a state health department investigation found he'd harmed several patients, most of them women and their newborn babies, but New York restored that medical license in 2014. Last year, he was again being investigated by the State Health Department. Joining me to talk about a few recent developments in the story is WNYC's investigative editor Christopher Werth. Christopher, refresh our memory of the story.

Christopher Werth: In this podcast, the reporter Karen Shakerdge and myself go back in time to when this doctor, Thomas Byrne, was practicing in upstate New York, and as you say, he was investigated. State health officials found 11 patients had been harmed over a course of two years. Three babies died. There were two others who were left with severe brain damage. This is where the name of the podcast comes in, Imminent Danger because in order to conduct that investigation, state health officials had to declare him an imminent danger to the patients he was treating. What we do is chronicle his path after that license was stripped. What we found is that he went on to New Mexico.

He went on to practice in Oklahoma. He kept accumulating malpractice allegations. There were 24 lawsuits in total that we found. What we discovered through the course of our reporting is that it is rather easy for a doctor who loses a medical license to go on and work in another state. In Byrne's case, he even got his New York medical license back after he lost it.

Janae Pierre: Once Byrne came back to New York, he treats a woman named Amy Lam. Tell us about her.

Christopher Werth: Amy was a journalism student who had moved from Hong Kong to New York. She was living in Harlem. In 2016, she had a baby and she gave birth at home. It was by accident. She'd gone to the hospital that she was supposed to give birth at. They said it was too early. She'd gone home. She ended up having the baby there. At that time, according to the EMS who showed up at her place, she was doing quite well and the baby was doing quite well, but her placenta had not come out yet. They transferred her. They took her to Harlem Hospital. It was while she was there that the physicians discovered that she had some internal bleeding and she was treated by Dr. Byrne, who was working at Harlem Hospital at that time, and two other physicians there.

Dr. Byrne conducted a hysterectomy. According to the medical notes that we see, that was in order to determine where this bleeding was coming from. Doctors could not ultimately stop that bleeding and Amy died at Harlem Hospital. Her husband later sued claiming it was a wrongful death, argued that those doctors had made a number of errors and should have done more actually to save her. Over the course of our reporting, I've spoken with staff at Harlem Hospital who were very familiar with this case and told me that other staff members were well aware of it.

This is something that is talked about at Harlem Hospital because of what happened to Amy. Harlem Hospital did ultimately settle with her husband for $3 million. While we were reporting this series, he also filed a complaint with what's called the State's Office of Professional Medical Conduct. What that resulted in was that Byrne and these two other doctors ended up becoming the focus of another investigation by state health officials.

Janae Pierre: In Byrne's case, this is a doctor who had been investigated in New York before he had lost that license, and now after the state gave him back that license, he's being investigated again.

Christopher Werth: Yes, that's right.

Janae Pierre: All right. What did that second investigation show?

Christopher Werth: I'll start with what we do know, which is not much. Last month, Amy's husband received a letter from the state notifying him that it had concluded that investigation and that it had found "insufficient evidence of wrongdoing in order to bring charges against any of the doctors involved" and that includes Byrne. That means that it was decided that disciplinary action was not merited in this case. We know that investigators reviewed records, that they conducted interviews with hospital staff, but we don't know what they learned or why the evidence that they had gathered was considered to be insufficient.

The state doesn't make that information publicly available when health officials decide not to bring charges. We can't look at what they learned or know what other members of hospital staff told them. They don't present that sort of thing to the public.

Janae Pierre: How is Amy's husband taking that news?

Christopher Werth: He said that he was disappointed but not surprised. He gave us a statement through his attorney. He also said that he felt that even if Byrne and these other doctors had been disciplined, that they would be able to just go on and practice somewhere else as our reporting found. I think that's really one of the characteristics of our health system that this podcast highlights. There are some serious questions about how much scrutiny doctors face when they're applying for a medical license.

There are also questions over transparency. I think you see that in the fact that we don't know what the state learned in its investigation and why officials made the decision that they did. The system is very protective of doctors. As you'll hear in this series, that also plays out in the information that hospitals do and do not have to share with government oversight bodies that are supposed to be keeping patients safe.

Janae Pierre: Christopher, looking ahead here, what more can we expect in this case, if anything?

Christopher Werth: I don't think that we can expect much. The state has conducted its investigation. It's closed. This case in particular is pretty much done and dusted.

Janae Pierre: That's WNYC's investigative editor Christopher Werth. Thanks so much, Christopher.

Christopher Werth: Thanks, Janae.

Janae Pierre: Thanks for listening to NYC NOW from WNYC. I'm Janae Pierre. We'll be back on our regular schedule tomorrow.

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