Imminent Danger is a five-part investigative podcast series from the WNYC newsroom and NYC NOW podcast about an OB/GYN who managed to get medical licenses in multiple states after health officials in New York declared him to be an “imminent danger” to the public and revoked his license decades earlier.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode includes a detailed description of medical injuries.

Marquita Baird has kept a bootbox full of medical records on a shelf in her home in Shawnee, Oklahoma, for more than two decades in the hope that, someday, someone would ask about what happened after an OB-GYN named Thomas J. Byrne performed a hysterectomy on her in 1999. Shawnee was one of several areas where Byrne would practice in the years after losing his medical license in New York. 

In the third episode of our five-part series, we examine the responsibility that state medical boards have in keeping doctors with a history of bad outcomes from treating patients. And we speak with the executive directors of the New Mexico and Oklahoma medical boards, both of which granted Byrne licenses after he lost the ability to practice in New York.

This series is supported by the Pulitzer Center.

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NYC NOW is a podcast of the most up-to-date local news from across New York City and the region. With three updates a day, every weekday, you'll get breaking news, top headlines and in-depth reporting. It’s all the news you need to know right now to make New York work for you. Subscribe to NYC NOW wherever you listen to podcasts: https://bit.ly/3LzuerS

Illustration by Golden Cosmos.
Video by Kim Nowacki.