‘Everybody feels really uncomfortable’: Woman says urgent care turned her son away after family waited 3 hours because she ‘pulled the race card’
A woman says that her son was turned away from an urgent care facility after her family waited for three hours because employees didn't like that she "pulled the race card."
In a TikTok posted on Jan. 22, Jayde (@jay.lo___) shows a conversation she has with a MultiCare Indigo Urgent Care employee after she and her husband waited with their son, who is 4, for over three hours.
The employee is heard asking them to leave the facility because they "pulled the race card." Jayde says that she and her family were the only Black people at the urgent care and the only people not seen by the facility's medical staff.
"They don't like that you pulled the race card. We are not racist here," the employee says to Jayde. "Everybody feels really uncomfortable with the way that you've spoken ... And so I'm just going to have to kindly ask you to leave."
Jayde says that her husband was told her son couldn't be seen by the doctors but that people who came in after them were seen first.
"We're the only Black people that have been in here today," Jayde says to the nurse. "[The doctors] are uncomfortable seeing us because we said they weren't seeing us because we're Black. And now no one feels comfortable seeing us."
With regard to the number of Black people sitting in the waiting room alongside Jayde and her family, the employee says, "That's your opinion."
In a statement to the Daily Dot, MultiCare's Chief Communications Officer Marce Edwards Olson said that MultiCare has been in contact with Jayde and that the company is investigating why she and her family weren't seen at Indigo Urgent Care.
"It is always our goal that people who come to us for care feel treated with dignity and respect, and clearly our patient’s family did not feel we were successful in this instance," Olson told the Dot.
On Wednesday, Jayde's video had almost 250,000 views.
@jay.lo___ Racist urgent care turned my 4 year old son away after we waited more than 3 hours. They treated non Black people that came in after us. When I said it felt racist and asked why others were being treated they told us to leave and called security. #racism #racismawareness #Medical #fyp ♬ original sound - Jayde
In a follow-up video, Jayde, who is a lawyer, says that her son hurt his arm, and she wasn't able to take him to a primary care physician because it was a Saturday. So, she and her husband took him to a MultiCare Indigo Urgent Care in Kent, Washington.
She says that when he got to the Indigo Urgent Care, she was told there would be up to a two-hour wait. Then, her husband was later told that her son wasn't going to be seen that day.
"'There are people with more emergency matters and we have appointments now,'" Jayde says she was told at the Urgent Care. She says patients who walked in after her family were seen, and she asked how "emergency matters" are determined.
Jayde says when her family wasn't given answers, she felt the situation was "racist and discriminatory."
"Considering we are the only Black people there. And we're the only ones they're saying they can't see," Jayde says. After waiting longer to see a doctor, Jayde says she was then told by the urgent care employee, whose name is Mia, that the staff was uncomfortable "because [she] played the race card."
She also says that her son was in a lot of pain and that she was worried that he had dislocated his arm. Staff allegedly told her that she and her family seemed "impatient," which Jayde says is a microaggression, or a backhanded comment, about her family based on their race.
"The difference in policies and procedures is when you apply them in a discriminatory manner," Jayde says. "Treat everyone with respect."
Commenters on Jayde's video suggested she go to the emergency room next time and that she file a complaint with the Washington Department of Health. Some defended the Urgent Care employees' actions, saying that "there are concrete triage steps that must be followed," or how medical professionals determine how urgent a patient's needs are.
"Patients are seen in order of severity based on that triage scale," @mama_llama_lisa commented.
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