AceShowbiz - Terry Crews' wife has accused staff at a Michigan medical facility of ignoring his mother Patricia when she was hospitalised with lymphoma.

The "White Chicks" star's spouse Rebecca told medical website Survivornet that Patricia's symptoms were largely ignored during her two-week stay at a Flint hospital back in 2015, insisting that it wasn't until a black nurse thoroughly read her chart that staffers realized how severe her condition was.

Suggesting that having the sportsman-tuned-actor as her son proved fortunate for Patricia, Rebecca explained, "My mother-in-law was fighting lymphoma, and though she was in remission as far as her T-cells, she contracted something like an infection."

"They did a blood panel on her and basically just let her lay in the hospital for two weeks, and unfortunately, what happened was that a black nurse happened to take a look at her chart and said, for lack of a better term, 'Oh crap, this is Terry Crews' mother.' "

She asserted, "There's no reason for her to have been left unattended in a bed for two weeks other than her colour," adding that the nurse also caught an infection in her bloodwork that had gone untreated.

Once staffers realised Patricia was the mother of the "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" star, she was airlifted to Detroit, where she subsequently passed away at the city's Henry Ford Hospital in November 2015. The Crews family believes her death was due to the infection that went untreated during her time in Flint.

"It does not seem to matter if these women are middle class, upper-middle-class, educated, insured. They're still dying in hospitals," Rebecca said of the disparity in healthcare faced by black women. "They're dying after childbirth. They're not getting the treatment that they need."