A Family's Fifty-Year Commitment to Care

In 1975, on a street in Manhattan's Chinatown, Dr. Robert Nyein opened a small office with a simple mission: to ensure that no woman felt unheard in her healthcare.

He was one of the first Chinese-speaking OBGYNs in the neighborhood, arriving at a moment when immigrant communities faced a particular kind of isolation. Patients, many of them newly arrived, many of them uninsured, struggled to navigate American healthcare in a language they didn't speak. Dr. Nyein saw that gap and stepped into it.

He became known as "the whisperer" not for his voice, but for his presence. Community members told stories of how he'd appear at just the right moment, delivering babies through storms, advocating for patients who couldn't advocate for themselves. 

This is how legacies begin: not with grand plans, but with one person deciding that their skills belong to their community.

When the Torch Passes

When Dr. Roland Nyein joined his father's practice, the practice was small: three or four employees, one office, and patients who had trusted his father for years. But Dr. Roland had learned something essential from watching his father work: that community care could also mean sustainable growth.

"We run it very much as a family business," he explains. "Multiple relatives are involved. But more than that, we run it based on the values my father established."

Over the next two decades, Dr. Roland and his sister Dr. Betty Nyein expanded methodically. Today, Bayard Street OBGYN operates five locations across New York City and Long Island.

The Third Generation Chooses This Path

Dr. Andrew Nyein is Dr. Roland's son. He's also the third generation of his family to enter obstetrics and gynecology.

"There's no other reason to go into the specialty unless you love it," says Dr. Andrew, "because it is hard work." Emergency medicine is undeniably intense, but patients come and go. In obstetrics, you follow families through the most vulnerable moments of their lives, you become part of the community. 

There's another layer for him, one that touches something deeper than career choice:

"Being able to speak the same language as my grandfather, as my father, to take care of these now third, fourth generation families in Chinatown, Queens, Brooklyn…that's very special."

Language-concordant care isn't a nice-to-have in this world; it's clinically essential.

Scaling Without Compromise 

Independent community practices exist in an increasingly difficult landscape. As Bayard Street OBGYN grew from one office to five, from a handful of staff to much more, the pressure intensified. Payroll. Benefits. HR compliance. The administrative weight of running a multi-location organization without the infrastructure of a larger system was beginning to become complex.

Initially, they tried larger platforms designed for bigger operations. These felt misaligned, too corporate, too overwhelming, built for a scale and culture that wasn't theirs. They needed something that matched their size and values: a partner that understood that small businesses operate differently, that community practices have different needs than enterprises.

That conversation led Dr. Roland and Lila to a different kind of partnership. One built for practices like theirs, where scaling didn't mean sacrificing what made them human. "The pricing was competitive both for health insurance and per-head payroll costs,' Lila explained, noting how Justworks compared to other platforms on the market

Dr. Andrew says that when he looks ahead two or three decades, he envisions a practice that hasn't been absorbed or diluted, that remains centered on caring for patients rather than "crunching numbers". That's not just a business. That's a legacy. And when legacies are rooted in a community, they have a way of enduring.