HHS Launches Investigation of Cleveland Clinic for Race-Based Treatment Programs

Probe marks rare effort by the Biden-Harris administration to police racial preferences

The Department of Health and Human Services is investigating two programs at the Cleveland Clinic that offer preferential care to minorities, the first such probe by an agency that has been loath to police racial preferences under the Biden-Harris administration.

HHS announced last week that it had launched an investigation of the clinic’s Minority Stroke Program, which is dedicated to “treating stroke in racial and ethnic minorities,” and its Minority Men’s Health Center, which screens black and Hispanic men for disease, in response to a discrimination complaint filed by Do No Harm, an advocacy group that opposes identity politics in medicine.

“[The Office of Civil Rights] has reviewed the complaint and has determined that it has sufficient authority and cause to investigate the allegations,” HHS wrote in a letter to Do No Harm’s attorneys. “Therefore, we have initiated an investigation.”

Founded in 2023 by Stanley Goldfarb—a physician at the University of Pennsylvania and the father of Washington Free Beacon chairman Michael Goldfarb—Do No Harm has filed more than 160 discrimination complaints against hospitals and medical schools around the country, six of them with HHS’s Office of Civil Rights. The probe marks the first time that HHS has agreed to investigate a hospital based on the group’s complaints, many of which have targeted race-based fellowships.

“Do No Harm will not rest until we eliminate all racial bias and political ideology from doctors’ offices, medical schools, hospitals, and in the government agencies that regulate them,” said Jared Ross, a senior fellow at Do No Harm. “The federal investigation by the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS-OCR) into the Cleveland Clinic—initiated by our complaint—is a small, incremental step.”

A spokeswoman for the Cleveland Clinic, Andrea Pacetti, declined to comment on the investigation but asserted that the hospital does not discriminate based on race.

“We can share that our mission is to care for life, research for health and educate those we serve,” she wrote in an email. “Our job in fulfilling our mission is to care for all individuals across the communities we serve regardless of race, ethnicity, or other characteristics.”

The probe signals the seriousness of the allegations against the Cleveland Clinic—which scrubbed the Minority Men’s Health Center from its website following Do No Harm’s complaint—and represents a rare rebuke of racial preferences from an administration that has often embraced them.

In 2021, Biden’s HHS praised a program in Utah that gave “non-white” residents priority for COVID drugs, listing the system as a “promising practice” for other states to consider. The administration also doled out special grants to non-white restaurant owners, excluded white farmers from a debt relief program, and expanded minority contracting initiatives—policies that were in many cases struck down by federal courts.

The programs at the Cleveland Clinic could meet the same fate if HHS agrees that they violate civil rights law. Depending on the probe’s outcome, the agency could refer the complaint to the Department of Justice, cut funding to the clinic, or force the Ohio-based hospital to open the programs to people of all races.

“Individuals at risk for stroke and other conditions are worthy of an equally robust pursuit, regardless of the color of their skin,” Do No Harm’s complaint reads. “Cleveland Clinic should be operating its programming in a manner that equally prioritizes, promotes, pursues, and includes all at-risk patients.”