In 2018, after years of suffering from congestive heart failure, Darryl Young underwent a heart transplant at a New Jersey hospital, hoping for a new lease on life. However, he suffered brain damage during the surgery and never woke up.
The following year, a ProPublica investigation revealed that Young's case was part of a pattern of failed heart transplants at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in 2018. After a series of poor outcomes, the center was seeing an increase in the percentage of patients still alive one year after surgery — a key benchmark — below the national average. Medical staff were under pressure to improve this metric. ProPublica released an audio recording of a meeting in which staffers discussed the need to keep Young alive for a year, fearing increased regulatory scrutiny if the show's survival rate declined again. In the recording, Dr. Mark Zucker, director of the transplant program, warned his team against offering Young's family the option of switching from aggressive treatment to more comfortable treatment without any life-saving efforts. did. He acknowledged that these actions were “highly unethical.”
ProPublica's revelations horrified Young's sister, Andrea Young. Young said he was not told the full extent of his brother's condition, as was a subsequent federal regulator's finding that the hospital posed the patient in “imminent danger.” Last month, she filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the hospital and members of her brother's medical team.
lawsuit The lawsuit alleges that staff at Newark Beth Israel were “negligent and deviated from generally accepted standards of care,” which led to Young's tragic medical outcome.
Defendants in the case have not yet filed responses to the complaint in court documents. However, spokeswoman Linda Kamate said in an email: “Newark Beth Israel Medical Center is one of the nation's top heart transplant programs, and we are committed to providing the highest quality care to our patients. I am working hard to.'' As this matter is currently in litigation, we are unable to provide further details. ” Zucker, who is no longer an employee of Newark Beth Israel, did not respond to requests for comment. His attorney also did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment.
Mr. Zucker also did not respond to a request for comment from ProPublica in 2018. At the time, Newark Beth Israel said in a statement on behalf of Mr. Zucker and other staff members that “disclosing selected portions of long and highly complex medical discussions out of context can undermine the intent of the conversation. It could be distorted.”
The lawsuit alleges that Young suffered brain damage due to severe low blood pressure during the transplant surgery. In 2019, when the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services scrutinized the heart transplant program following a ProPublica investigation, regulators found that the hospital had not taken corrective action despite patient suffering and that further It was determined that the damage was caused. For example, one patient's kidneys began to fail after a transplant in August 2018, and medical staff internally recommended that blood pressure be measured more frequently during the procedure, according to the complaint. The lawsuit alleges the hospital failed to implement its own recommendations and “repeated these failures” during Young's surgery a month later, leading to the brain injury.
The suit also alleges that Young was not asked if she had advance directives, such as overriding a do-not-resuscitate order, despite hospital policy that requires patients to be questioned upon admission. There is. The complaint also notes that a CMS investigation found that Andrea Young was not informed of her brother's condition.
Andrea Young said she understands mistakes can happen during medical procedures, “but it's their duty to be honest and tell the family exactly what went wrong. It's a responsibility.” Young said she had to fight to find out what was happening to her brother. At one point, I tried to go to the library and study medical books so I could ask the right questions. “I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday, my desperation for answers,” she said.
Andrea Young said she was motivated to file the lawsuit because she wants accountability. “The doctors in particular refused to be honest and truthful about my brother's condition from the beginning. Not only was that wrong and unethical, it took so much away from our entire family.” she said. “The most important thing to me is that those in charge are held accountable.”
“It's a scary concept for a facility to prioritize its existence over its patients,” said attorney Jonathan Romulo, who is representing Andrea Young in the case with co-counsel Christian Lopiano. In addition to seeking compensation for Darryl Young's children, Romulo said, “I want to bring attention to this case so that something like this never happens again.”
The lawsuit further alleges that Newark Beth Israel's medical staff violated Young's privacy and shared details of Young's case to the media without her permission under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, commonly known as HIPAA. They claim that they violated the law. “We want people to become whistleblowers and come forward with information,” but that information should go directly to patients and their families, Romulo said.
credit:
ProPublica's Demetrius Freeman
A 2019 CMS investigation found Newark Beth Israel's program was putting patients at “immediate jeopardy,” the most serious level of violation, requiring the hospital to implement a remediation plan. . Newark Beth Israel did not agree with all of the regulator's findings, saying in a statement at the time that the CMS team lacked the “evidence, expertise, and experience” to evaluate and diagnose patient outcomes. He said that he had done so.
The hospital implemented a corrective plan and continues to operate a heart transplant program. of Latest federal datais based on procedures from January 2021 to June 2023 and shows that Newark Beth patients have a lower one-year survival probability than the national average. It also shows that the number of transplant failures, including deaths, during that period was higher than the number of deaths expected under the program.
Andrea Young said she has struggled with feelings of emptiness for years after her brother's surgery. They were very close and spoke on the phone every day. “There is nothing in this world that can bring my brother back, so my only consolation is that those responsible are held accountable,” she said. Darryl Young never woke up after his transplant surgery and passed away on September 12, 2022.
Another medical malpractice lawsuit filed in 2020 by the wife of another Newark Beth Israel heart transplant patient who died after receiving an organ infected with a parasitic disease is also ongoing. The hospital has denied the charges in court filings. The state of New Jersey, the employer of the pathologist named in the lawsuit, settled the case for $1.7 million this month, said plaintiff's attorney Christian Lopiano. The remaining cases are ongoing.
