A father and veteran struggling with years of dialysis while waiting for a kidney in Washington learned he waited an extra two years because of a false idea that Black patients have stronger kidneys, according to a lawsuit.
The Olympia man is suing Swedish Health Services and the United Network for Organ Sharing , which manages the national database and transplant list.
In the lawsuit filed June 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, a patient accuses the two parties of racial discrimination that led to longer wait times for him and other Black patients in need of kidney transplants, as he nearly died waiting before ultimately accepting a kidney with Hepatitis C.
McClatchy News reached out to the parties named in the lawsuit and their attorneys and did not immediately receive a response Oct. 4.
In a statement shared with KING-TV, Swedish Health Services said it doesn’t discriminate against transplant patients and adjusted his place on the waitlist in a timely manner.
‘Eugenics-style racism’
Hospitals typically assess a patient’s need for a new kidney by measuring estimated glomerular filtration rate, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.
But for years, these medical institutions factored in candidates’ races , specifically whether they were Black, according to the lawsuit and UNOS.
The lawsuit says the “race-based coefficient is based on eugenics-style racism and stereotypes that assume Black Americans are more physically fit than white Americans and other racial groups,” the lawsuit says.
In 2022, the board of directors of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network voted to eliminate the race-based coefficient and told hospitals to reassess Black patients’ placements on waiting lists, according to UNOS.
Kidney transplant programs had until January 2024 to notify Black patients of changes to their waiting times, the nonprofit said.
“Defendants now admit these scores were artificially adjusted in a racist manner from the beginning,” according to the lawsuit.
In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, filed Aug. 26 by UNOS, the organization says it never encouraged the hospital to use the race-based coefficient and rejected any idea that the hospital acted as an agent of UNOS.
‘Unbearable’
After three years of living with kidney disease, in November 2019, the patient who filed the lawsuit was forced to stop working and start dialysis that was “not effective” and made him “essentially a prisoner in his own home,” according to the lawsuit.
He was added to the kidney waiting list around the same time, the lawsuit says.
He said he should have been added to the waitlist in December 2017 when his eGFR score dropped below the 20 mL/minute figure that typically constitutes kidney failure , but the number was inflated due to the race-based coefficient and kept him off the list longer, according to the lawsuit.
In December 2022, the man nearly died when his at-home dialysis failed and he underwent emergency surgery, the lawsuit says. After that point, his “situation became unbearable,” and he discussed with his family that he might die while waiting for a kidney, according to the lawsuit.
It wasn’t until eight months later that the man said he was notified that a race-based coefficient had been used to calculate his placement on the waitlist and he was entitled to a wait time adjustment of nearly two years.
During those years, the patient said he endured a “living nightmare.”
In December, after learning he was supposed to be higher on the list than he was, the patient was offered to be an alternate for a kidney he ultimately didn’t receive.
In January, “scared that he would never receive a kidney and that he would die,” he was offered a kidney that had Hepatitis C, and he accepted it, according to the lawsuit.
He said he had to go through additional medical care to treat the Hepatitis C.
‘Lifesaving transplant’
The patient alleges violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, violation of Washington’s state law against discrimination, outrageous conduct and breach of fiduciary duty, the latter of which is aimed only at Swedish, according to the suit.
“After UNOS changed its policies to bar any race-based coefficients in calculating transplant patients’ Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (‘eGFR’) scores, Swedish moved expeditiously to implement the changes and notify patients,” the provider said in its statement to KING-TV. “In fact, the plaintiff in this lawsuit … was timely added to the kidney transplant waitlist and received a lifesaving transplant from Swedish.”
He said the hospital failed to promptly notify him he needed to be moved higher on the waitlist after UNOS adjusted its policy.
Both UNOS and Swedish’s motions to dismiss the lawsuit said the patient was time-barred, an argument disputed by his legal team, his attorney David Ko told McClatchy News. The organizations said the patient’s window to sue began when he first learned his eGFR score in 2017, and the window ended in 2020, but Ko said that was before the man knew about the use of the race-based coefficient.
His attorneys filed an opposition to the motion to dismiss Oct. 1, records show.
The civil proceedings are ongoing.
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