Cleveland Clinic, widely regarded as the top-performing hospital globally, is accused of racial discrimination in an official civil rights complaint issued Wednesday by anti-discrimination healthcare organization Do No Harm (DNH).
The complaint, filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, alleges the clinic’s Minority Stroke Program and Minority Men’s Health Center engage in discriminatory practices by systematically excluding white patients in favor of minorities. The clinic receives federal funding and is subject to anti-discrimination laws that make such practices illegal.
The health care professionals and patients of DNH, who “[seek] to keep identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice,” are represented by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL).
“[E]xtending the care efforts described by the clinic’s special stroke and men’s health programs to all patients who need it would be commendable,” WILL Associate Counsel Cara Tolliver and Deputy Counsel Daniel P. Lennington wrote in the official complaint letter. “Instead, a racially motivated focus has infected these programs — creating a racial dichotomy under which patients are prioritized and cared for, and displacing the otherwise laudable goal of helping humanity equally, without regard to one’s race.”
In an interview with The Federalist, Tolliver emphasized the real consequences of racially discriminatory healthcare the DNH hopes to end.
“[These] are everyday people in search of help regarding stroke and various other health conditions … encountering these racial preferences for programs that could be very helpful, and then being faced with the fact that Cleveland Clinic does not
