A grieving sister has launched a legal battle against a hospital accused of keeping her brain-dead brother alive for years to boost its performance rates.
Darryl Young, 61, suffered irreversible brain damage and was left in a vegetative state after a botched heart transplant procedure at New Jersey’s Newark Beth Israel hospital in 2018, according to a new lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges the center only kept Young alive to boost its transplant survival records, which had fallen below the national average after a pattern of failed surgeries.
Audio recordings obtained by ProPublica appeared to show hospital staff saying they would do all they could to keep their patient alive in order to buoy their survival rates despite there being no chance of recovery.
The hospital staff’s alleged cover-up, which one doctor privately called ‘very unethical,’ came after damning government inspection reports found the facility put patients in ‘immediate jeopardy.’
Darryl Young was allegedly kept alive despite having extensive brain damage and no chance of recovery, for four years. The hospital kept the truth of his condition and poor prognosis from his family, according to the lawsuit (Photo courtesy of Mr Young’s obituary)
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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulates hospitals that receive federal funding, as does Newark Beth Israel, found in 2019 the hospital failed to enact the measures it deemed necessary to save patients.
The lawsuit against both individual doctors and the health center alleges staff were ‘negligent and deviated from accepted standards of practice,’ leading to Mr Young’s tragic outcome from a botched heart transplant.
Mr Young, who needed a heart transplant for his congestive heart failure, suffered brain damage thought to be from a dangerous drop in blood pressure during his surgery and showed no signs of regaining consciousness.
At first, Andrea Young’s family was told the surgery went well, and there was nothing to worry about. But as days passed without her brother waking up, Ms Young became uneasy.
Dr Margarita Camacho, the surgeon who performs the vast majority of heart transplants, including Mr Young’s, assured her she’d seen patients recover from similar situations, according to the lawsuit.
Ms Young was later told her brother had brain damage, but in only small concentrations, which initially gave his sister hope.
She said: ‘Now I know it was false hope.’
Despite showing no brain activity, the suit claims, doctors and nurses kept Mr Young attached to a feeding tube for nutrients, suctioned mucous out of his lungs, and hooked him up to a breathing machine.
He was kept alive until September 2022.
Ms Young told ProPublica that while she understands medical mistakes happen, ‘it’s their duty and their responsibility to be honest and let the family know exactly what went wrong.’
The fight to learn about her brother’s condition and the hospital staff’s deception was so frustrating she even read medical papers and textbooks in the library so she would know the right questions to ask.
She added: ‘I remember as clear as if it were yesterday, being so desperate for answers.’
Ms Young is hoping the lawsuit will hold the hospital accountable: ‘Especially with the doctors never, from the outset, being forthcoming and truthful about the circumstances of my brother’s condition, not only is that wrong and unethical, but it took a lot away from our entire family.
‘The most important thing to me is that those responsible be held accountable.’
While the hospital has not filed a response to Ms Young’s legal complaint, spokesperson Linda Kamateh said: ‘Newark Beth Israel Medical Center is one of the top heart transplant programs in the nation and we are committed to serving our patients with the highest quality of care. As this case is in active litigation, we are unable to provide further detail.’
The myriad of deaths following transplants – at least six – could partially explain why the heart transplant program’s one-year survival rate dropped below 85 percent in 2018, according to ProPublica, well below the national average of about 89 percent.
The hospital does around 29 heart transplants annually.
According to ProPublica reporting, doctors treating Mr Young convened secretly after the botched, surgery on Sept. 21, 2018, which caused the patient to suffer from pneumonia, strokes, seizures, and a fungal infection, though it is not clear what specifically caused each of these effects.
They agreed they needed to do all they could to keep him alive, according to the investigation by ProPublica, in order to buoy their survival rate.
In recordings of the meeting obtained by the news site, Dr Mark Zucker, director of the hospital’s heart and lung transplant programs, said: ‘We need to keep him alive until June 30 at a minimum.’
The program’s survival rate had been falling for years. If it fell below a certain level designated by CMS – 73 percent of patients surviving after one year – it could prompt a federal audit.
If that audit were to uncover serious problems, such abnormally low survival rates, the hospital would no longer receive reimbursement from Medicare for transplants.
The hospital’s heart transplant survival rate would drop from 84.2 percent to 81.6 percent if Mr Young were to be the seventh patient to die.
While this wouldn’t merit a formal audit, ProPublican reported that the transplant team worried this decline would draw unwanted attention from the federal government.
According to the reporting, Dr Zucker said: ‘If he’s not dead in this [yearly survival rate] report, even if he’s dead in the next report, it becomes an issue that moves out six more months.’
Newark Beth Israel Hospital has not responded formally to the legal complaint, though a spokesperson maintained that ‘we are committed to serving our patients with the highest quality of care’
Mr Young suffered brain damage during his heart transplant and never woke up. A medical note about his state after the surgery said: ‘He follows no commands. He looks very encephalopathic,’ meaning brain damaged.
Doctors are supposed to tell the patient’s family when an operation doesn’t go as planned, resulting in their patient not waking up. But Ms Young claimed they never had such a conversation with her.
The hospital insisted it held a family meeting with Ms Young to discuss her brother’s state. But, according to the legal complaint, the medical team did not communicate the patient’s poor prognosis.
A follow-up on May 23, 2019, showed Ms Young still hadn’t received updates after a procedure was canceled due to her brother’s declining condition. The medical records indicated a poor prognosis, but she was not informed.
They also failed to let her know he had contracted a deadly fungal infection in the hospital called C. auris, which is resistant to many drugs, and can cause skin and bloodstream infections.
The lawsuit claimed the hospital also ignored remedial measures in several other cases.
ProPublican found that in 2018, two patients, one receiving a heart transplant and one receiving a lung transplant, both went into kidney failure. The complication was tied to severe drops in blood pressure, which is also what led to Mr Young’s brain damage.
After the first incident, internal hospital policy recommended increasing the frequency of blood pressure readings.
Then, after the second incident, the hospital again recommended better monitoring. CMS found no indication staff implemented the new policy at that time.
