The Cleveland Clinic plays an important role in the communities we serve, providing uncompensated health care to the poor, engaging in a broad range of medical, research, education and training programs, and sponsoring and supporting various public health initiatives and services. We take seriously our responsibilities as a non-profit tax-exempt charitable organization and believe our activities incorporate our institution’s mission and core values, as well as satisfy all standards for tax-exempt organizations established by the Internal Revenue Code.
Recognizing the importance of transparency and accountability for patients, donors and the community at large, the information on this website is intended to provide you with easy access to information about the nature and extent of our community benefit programs and activities.
Community Benefit Report
Cleveland Clinic has a long tradition of dedication to the Cleveland community. The Clinic was founded in 1921 with a mission to serve the community, care for the sick, and improve that care through research and education. While remaining dedicated to this mission, the Clinic is continually developing new programs, forging new alliances with other community partners and leaders, and devoting ever-increasing resources to meet community needs.
The community benefits we provide range from providing health care for the neediest to funding innovative medical research that leads to new treatments and cures, and from training and education of health care professionals, to community outreach programs. The Cleveland Clinic is proud of the many services it provides to the various communities it serves and publishes an annual system-wide comprehensive report detailing the system’s activities.
Review the 2006 Community Outreach Report.
Review the 2007 Community Outreach Report.
Uncompensated Charity Care Program
Cleveland Clinic is committed to providing world-class care to all patients regardless of ability to pay. Under its policies, Cleveland Clinic provides financial assistance to patients who do not have insurance coverage and who have family income levels up to four times the Federal Poverty Income Guidelines. Patients who have insurance but still need assistance in payment for their medical services are also eligible for consideration. This program is in addition to any patient’s entitlement to free hospital care under the Ohio Hospital Care Assurance Program and includes Cleveland Clinic physician services. In the year 2005, the cost of hospital and physician charity care provided by the Cleveland Clinic Health System exceeded $100 million.
To read more about Cleveland Clinic’s Financial Assistance Program, click here.
Lerner Research Institute
The Lerner Research Institute of the Cleveland Clinic is one of the largest private, biomedical research facilities in the United States. The Clinic, through the operation of the Lerner Research Institute and commitment to wide-ranging clinical research through over 2,000 clinical trials, is committed to uncovering the mechanisms that underlie some of the most prevalent and debilitating human disorders. With over 300 researchers in over 150 laboratories throughout the Institute, and over 1,500 physicians, many of whom are actively involved in ongoing and cutting-edge research, the Cleveland Clinic demonstrates daily its commitment to that part of its mission that is dedicated to investigating patients’ problems. With total annual expenditures exceeding $150 million from federal agencies, non-federal societies and associations and endowment funds, the Institute is the fifth largest in the country.
To read more about the Lerner Research Institute, click here.
To review the Lerner Research Institute 2006-2007 Scientific Report, click here.
To read more about our clinical trials, click here.
Philanthropy
As a nonprofit academic medical institution, all donations to the Clinic are used for the purpose of providing and improving health care services. Philanthropic gifts help the Clinic to realize some of its largest goals, such as the new Heart and Vascular Institute, and to accomplish numerous smaller initiatives such as the Minority Men’s Health Center. The Clinic enjoys the support of a community of friends who generously contribute to the Clinic on an annual basis. In 2005, over $14 million was contributed in over 19,000 separate gifts to the Annual Fund alone.
The Clinic also enjoys the support of corporations, foundations and other groups with goals and missions that are closely aligned with those of the Clinic. New gifts and pledges by individuals, corporations and foundations exceeded $149 million in 2005, creating exciting new opportunities in patient care, research, education and ways to benefit our community.
Donors are the Clinic’s most trusted partners who help the Clinic through their financial support to continually improve care to patients, advance medicine through innovation, and train the next generation of healthcare professionals.
To read more about how to “Support Our Mission,” click here.
Senate Finance Committee Responses July 2005
In July 2005, the Cleveland Clinic provided responses to questions posed by the Senate Finance Committee to us and nine other non-profit, tax-exempt hospital providers concerning our charity care and community benefit activities and various related issues. The Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Senator Charles E. Grassley, like many governmental groups, has indicated that it is interested in learning more about the activities of nonprofit organizations, especially tax-exempt healthcare institutions, primarily to ensure that these organizations meet the community benefit standards required for tax-exempt status. Chairman Grassley and others have also expressed interest in tax-exempt organization governance practices and whether some of the transparency and accountability in governance rules recently imposed upon for-profit corporations have been or should be incorporated into the rules applicable to nonprofit organizations.
Much of the information provided in our response to the Senate Finance Committee is also found in our Community Benefit Report or in other publicly available documents that can be found through this website or elsewhere. We believe our response confirms that Cleveland Clinic has a strong, continuing and growing commitment to serving the healthcare needs of the communities it serves. From its inception in 1921, the Cleveland Clinic has been organized both as a multi-specialty physician group practice and a charitable organization, within a single shared governance and management structure, and dedicated to the mission of “better care for the sick, investigation of their problems and further education of those who serve.” The Clinic has always believed that its structure as a group medical practice, employing physicians on a salaried basis, affords unique opportunities and abilities to consistently and effectively carry out its mission. The Clinic believes that our response to the Senate Finance Committee reflects a healthcare institution that has grown into an integrated healthcare delivery system comprised of multiple hospitals, numerous community-based healthcare centers, a large multi-specialty physician group, a medical school, and a large research institute that continues to be passionate about the furtherance of its mission.
We believe that our response demonstrates that the Cleveland Clinic provides a significant amount of charity care and, because of its employed physician model, is able to extend its financial assistance policies to professional physician services on both an inpatient and outpatient basis. We provide medically necessary health care services to all members of our community without regard to ability to pay. Our responses also show that the Cleveland Clinic is committed to the role of research in better serving patients through uncovering the causes of, or developing better treatments for, the diseases that affect us all; that the Cleveland Clinic is involved in and supports community outreach activities that are significant not only in number but in scope and diversity; and that the Clinic maintains one of the largest graduate medical education programs, and conducts and/or sponsors numerous public health education programs and initiatives throughout its communities. Taken together, our activities indicate that the Cleveland Clinic meets the community benefit, charitable organizational and operational standards long recognized as conditions for federal tax-exempt status, and demonstrate our continued commitment to our charitable mission: “better care for the sick, investigation of their problems, and further education of those who serve.”
The Cleveland Clinic recognizes the importance of transparency and accountability to patients, donors and the community at large, and is committed to continue to inform these constituent groups about our activities, our charity care policies and the nature and extent of our community benefit programs. In keeping with this commitment, a complete copy of our 2005 narrative responses to the Senate Finance Committee is now available through this website.
To review the 2005 narrative responses to the Senate Finance Committee, click here. For more information, click here.
