by It’s not unusual to think that a doctor has forgotten you on the examining table when the wait time is long, but it happened to one Washington mother and her 4-month-old son after they were locked in an urgent care facility after it closed.
She and her sick baby were waiting to see a doctor for more than 40 minutes when she realized they were locked inside the Urgent Care facility.
Savannah Lewitt and her baby, Kason, went to MultiCare Puyallup Urgent Care around 7 p.m., KOMO reported. Kason had a terrible cough and his concerned mother hoped to get a chest X-ray.
“She said it would be 10 minutes or so,” Lewitt told Inside Edition. “I changed his diaper and gave him a bottle. I looked at the clock, it was 30 minutes later.”
When Lewitt went to call a nurse, she realized the building was empty— the clinic had closed and the employees had all left.
“I realized it was dark in the office. I grabbed my son and walked through the building saying ‘Hello,’” Lewitt told Inside Edition. “I broke down crying and called my mom-in-law.”
Lewitt picked up her son and opened a door, setting off an alarm and causing her to panic. Fortunately, a cleaning crew employee found them and let them out of the building, where she met security by the front door.
“It was terrifying just to know you are alone in there. My son was having trouble breathing. What if I was back there and he would’ve stopped breathing? No one was there. It angered me. I’ve worked in the nursing field and how do you forget about a patient?” she told Inside Edition.
Kason didn’t receive treatment and spent the night crying, Lewitt told KOMO.
Multicare issued a statement to KOMO on Oct. 21:
“While it is clear from the facts known at this time that routine protocols were not followed during the clinic closing process, we will be conducting a thorough investigation to determine why those protocols were skipped as the clinic closed for the evening.”
The company told KOMO that they have added a protocol that every room and door must be checked immediately before leaving the clinic.
Lewitt told KOMO that she has been a patient at Multicare for years, but can’t excuse the mistake that left her and her sick son abandoned in the dark.
“Because the feeling I felt, and how scared and alone, like I couldn’t do anything,” Lewitt told KOMO. “I don’t want somebody to ever go through that feeling. It was horrible.”
