SUNY Downstate Accused of Retaliating Against Whistleblower Surgeons
Two surgeons have accused a New York state-run university and its medical school of retaliating against them for reporting concerns to senior management about patient safety and deaths in the institution’s heart-surgery and organ-transplant programs.
The accusations, made in lawsuits filed in December and January in state court in Brooklyn, name as defendants the State University of New York and SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University. They were filed by Rainer W.G. Gruessner, who was until August 2019 SUNY Downstate’s chair of the Department of Surgery, and John Renz, a transplant surgeon recruited by Dr. Gruessner.
The lawsuit filed by Dr. Gruessner, in December, outlines the steps that he and Dr. Renz made to mend “systemic violations of patient care and safety” that resulted in “patient harm and even death” at SUNY Downstate and its affiliated hospital, University Hospital of Brooklyn.
The lawsuit details how both the cardiothoracic and organ-transplant program had been under the scrutiny of state and other regulators. Among the many problems raised to senior management was the lack of 24-hour coverage for cardiothoracic surgery patients and in the cardiothoracic intensive-care unit, the complaint says.
The complaint from Dr. Gruessner says he and Dr. Renz raised repeated concerns about SUNY Downstate’s organ-transplant program. Past patient deaths and transplant failures had been misreported, while some deaths, according to their reviews, were caused in some cases by not prescribing enough immunosuppression medication to a patient and “a lack of actual patient care.”
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