Wife says urgent care turned son away because he’s black

A woman says her son was turned away from an emergency room after her family waited three hours because staff didn’t like her “pulling the race card.”

In a TikTok posted on Jan. 22, Jayde (@jay.lo___) shares a conversation she has with a MultiCare Indigo Urgent Care worker after she and her husband waited over three hours with their four-year-old son.

The staff member can be heard telling them to leave the facility because they “did the race card.” Jayde says that she and her family were the only black people in the emergency room and the only ones that the facility’s medical staff did not see.

“They don’t like that you drew the race card. We’re not racist here,” the staffer tells Jayde. “Everyone is really uncomfortable with the way you’ve been speaking … And so I just have to kindly ask you to leave.”

Jayde says her husband was told her son was not to be seen by the doctors, but that people who came after them were seen first.

“We’re the only black people in here today,” Jayde tells the nurse. “[The doctors] uncomfortable seeing us because we said they don’t see us because we are black. And now no one feels comfortable seeing us.”

Regarding the number of black people sitting next to Jayde and her family in the waiting room, the staffer 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 were not seen at Indigo Urgent Care.

“It is always our goal to make people who come to us feel treated with dignity and respect, and our patient’s family clearly did not feel that we were successful in this case,” Olson told Dot.

As of Wednesday, Jayde’s video had nearly 250,000 views.

@jay.lo___ Racist emergency care sent my 4 year old son away after we waited more than 3 hours. They treated non-blacks who came 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, a lawyer, says her son injured his arm and she couldn’t take him to a GP because it was a Saturday. So she and her husband took him to a MultiCare Indigo Urgent Care in Kent, Washington.

She says when he arrived at Indigo Urgent Care she was told he would wait up to two hours. Then her husband was later told that their son would not be seen that day.

“‘There are people with more urgent matters and we have appointments now,'” says Jayde, as she was told in Urgent Care. She says patients who came in after their family were seen, and she asked how “emergencies” are determined.

Jayde says when her family received no responses, she found the situation “racist and discriminatory.”

“Considering we’re the only black people there. And we’re the only ones they say they can’t see,” says Jayde. After waiting longer to see a doctor, Jayde said she was then told by the ER worker, whose name is Mia, that the staff were uncomfortable “because [she] played the race card.”

She also says her son was in a lot of pain and she was concerned that he had dislocated his arm. Co-workers reportedly told her that she and her family seemed “impatient,” which Jayde says is micro-aggression, or a sneaky comment about her family because of her race.

“The difference between the policies and procedures is that you apply them in a discriminatory way,” says Jayde. “Treat everyone with respect.”

Commenters on Jayde’s video suggested that next time she should go to the emergency room and file a complaint with the Washington Department of Health and Human Services. Some defended the actions of Urgent Care staff, saying “there must be specific triage steps that must be followed” or how medical professionals determine how urgent a patient’s needs are.

“Patients are sorted by severity based on this triage scale,” commented @mama_llama_lisa.

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