Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll explore deepening concerns over maternal health care at a Brooklyn hospital where three women have died during childbirth since 2020. We’ll also look at a hearing in the case of Daniel Penny, who choked Jordan Neely to death in a subway last year.
A pregnant woman nearing her due date went to the Woodhull Medical Center in Brooklyn in mid-September complaining of stomach pain and nausea. Three nights after hospital staff sent her home, the woman, a 24-year-old home health aide from Honduras, returned with worsened pain and was admitted. Just one day later, she died following her emergency C-section.
The woman, Bevorlin Garcia Barrios, is now the third to die at Woodhull during childbirth since 2020, according to a new report by my colleagues Joseph Goldstein and Wesley Parnell. The death adds to questions about the hospital’s ability to properly care for mothers and their babies — and about a continuing maternal health crisis.
Woodhull is viewed by medical and public health professionals as a weak link in the 11 public hospitals run by New York City. Government regulators were alarmed by a series of medical errors that they uncovered in two earlier maternal deaths, culminating in the loss of one doctor’s license and another doctor’s job.
Ms. Garcia Barrios’s death was not publicly reported until now, and whether hospital regulators are examining it remains unclear. The medical examiner’s office is still investigating her cause of death. But if there were errors in the hospital’s handling of her care, Woodhull could face pressure for increased staffing and new safety protocols or the closure of the maternity unit.
Nelson Ramirez, the partner of Ms. Garcia Barrios, said that visits to Woodhull were frustrating because she did not speak English, and that translation services were poor. He said he often felt that her complaints were watered down as a result. When her condition worsened during her last stay at the hospital, he was barred from being by her side because he was not, legally, her husband.
“They said she was OK, and then something got complicated so they went back inside, and then two hours later my wife was dead,” he said.
Should the hospital maternity ward be shut, the consequences could be painful for people in the surrounding Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick neighborhoods. Some 1,300 babies are born in the unit each year.
The public hospital system, NYC Health + Hospitals, has tried to improve maternal health in recent years, including creating simulation labs for obstetric staff members to practice how they respond to various emergencies. Still, tragedies like Ms. Garcia Barrios’s death continue to happen, though they remain rare.
Close to 125,000 live births occur annually in New York City, and more than 20 women typically die each year from causes related to pregnancy or childbirth. Black women were nine times as likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth as white women from 2001 to 2019, according to city data.
Last year, a woman bled to death after giving birth at Woodhull. Investigators with the State Health Department concluded that a troubling lapse by a surgical team resulted in her death.
And in 2020, another woman died at the hospital after a doctor inserted a catheter too far into her back, botching a routine procedure, and gave her a full dose of anesthesia without checking to see how she responded to a small test dose. That doctor was stripped of his license after a report by federal hospital inspectors determined that he was involved in several adverse outcomes.
Several people familiar with Ms. Garcia Barrios’s case found the decision to send her home earlier in the week as potentially troubling, noting that her symptoms and recent C-section may have signaled a serious problem. There was no indication that her condition was treated as an emergency the night she was admitted, and little explanation has emerged so far of what went wrong, the people said.
Weather
Plan for partly sunny skies and a high near the mid-70s. Tonight, mostly cloudy and temperatures in the low 60s, with a slight chance of rain after 2 a.m.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended today (for Rosh Hashana).
The latest New York news
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Declining e-bike deaths: The rate of injuries and deaths from lithium battery fires slowed in the year since New York City implemented new safety measures for e-bikes and e-scooters.
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Golfers competing in Brooklyn: The Brooklyn Open golf tournament brought players whose backgrounds are as varied as their swings.
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A doorman prosecuted for embezzlement: Prosecutors charged a doorman at a Manhattan building with stealing nearly $500,000 from a 91-year-old former resident who had moved into a nursing home. Co-workers said that the doorman was beloved and that tenants had trusted him.
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Treasurer charged with fraud: Erlene King, the treasurer of Anthony Jones’s campaign for Brooklyn borough president, sent thousands of dollars to associates and told them to distribute the funds to others who would then donate to the campaign, federal prosecutors said.
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Death of a Brooklyn prosecutor: Eugene Gold, who prosecuted high-profile cases in the 1970s and championed Soviet Jews but ran afoul of the law himself after retiring, was 100.
Daniel Penny in court over a subway chokehold killing
The man who choked Jordan Neely to death on a city subway last year appeared in a Manhattan court on Thursday alongside his lawyers to ask a judge to suppress comments he made to police officers soon after the encounter, according to reporting from my colleague Hurubie Meko.
The man, Daniel Penny, approached Mr. Neely from behind, brought him to the ground and put him in a chokehold on May 1, 2023, according to prosecutors. Even after Mr. Neely appeared to have stopped moving, bystander video showed that Mr. Penny did not let go for 50 seconds.
Mr. Neely’s death was ruled a homicide two days later. Mr. Penny was charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Body camera footage showed Mr. Penny after the killing inside the Broadway-Lafayette Street station in Manhattan telling officers that Mr. Neely, who was homeless, had boarded the F train and was acting in an erratic manner.
Mr. Penny cooperated with officers at the scene, then went to the precinct with them, court filings show. He was charged more than a week later. Now, his lawyers are arguing that most of his comments to officers that day were obtained illegally.
But the prosecutors contend that Mr. Penny’s comments are admissible, and also argue that Mr. Neely’s prior acts and mental history are irrelevant to the case.
METROPOLITAN diary
Ugly vase
Dear Diary:
My girlfriend and I moved into our first apartment together in Carroll Gardens in 2008.
One day, I was coming home from the subway when I passed a stoop full of items that were up for grabs. One was an odd-looking, amateurishly handmade ceramic piece.
It was shaped like a creature with a catlike head on a Venus of Willendorf-style body, with a forked tail that doubled as the handle. It was equal parts creepy and hilarious.
My girlfriend and I often played little jokes on each other, so I brought the pitcher home with an idea. I left it outside our front door and went inside the apartment, where my girlfriend was sitting on the sofa.
I told her had I found something curious on the street and gave her a choice: She could open the door and see it, but if she did, we would have to keep it the rest of our lives. Or she could decline to open the door, in which case I would get rid of the item and never speak of it again.
Sixteen years later, we still live together in Brooklyn, are married with three children and have a hideous pitcher we can never part with.
— Aron Watman
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. James Barron will be back on Monday. — S.C.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
TK and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post A Death in Childbirth Raises New Questions About a Hospital appeared first on New York Times.
