Welcome Letter
Dear patients, caregivers and community members,
As Cleveland Clinic’s international presence grows, so do our responsibilities as a global citizen.
Providing high-quality healthcare is only a part of our mission.
We have an obligation to uplift the many communities we call home. We must improve our neighbors’ wellbeing, quality of life and opportunities to succeed. We must operate in sustainable ways that are good for our planet. We must embrace diversity, champion human rights and lead with humility and inclusiveness.
We are proud to be a signatory of the United Nations Global Compact, a commitment to abide by these universal principles.
We offer this 14th annual Communication on Progress, reporting on our performance on environmental, social and governance issues in 2022.
Last year, our nonprofit health system contributed $1.41 billion in annual community benefits from our operations in Ohio, Nevada and Florida. We are taking numerous actions to address urgent public health issues in our communities, including infant mortality, childhood lead exposure, food insecurity and pediatric mental health concerns.
We are investing in neighborhood development projects like Innovation Square, adjacent to our main campus in Cleveland, which provides affordable housing and a new grocery store. We also are recruiting, hiring and training local residents for healthcare careers, as well as contracting with diverse suppliers and mentoring companies owned by women, minorities, veterans and LGBTQ+ community members.
To ensure that we address community needs everywhere Cleveland Clinic operates, we have created the position of Chief Community Officer — an executive-level role with enterprise-wide responsibility to lead our community support strategies and develop collaborative relationships that bring about positive change.
Our sustainability program is setting an example for healthcare organizations. Its many achievements include decreasing our direct and indirect carbon emissions by more than 20%, tripling our recycling rate and earning green building certification across our global footprint.
Our ultimate goal is to be carbon neutral by 2027 by further reducing emissions, being more energy efficient and sourcing renewable energy. We also are working to significantly reduce water use, obtain food from local and/or sustainable sources, and divert 100% of our nonhazardous waste from landfills by 2027.
I invite you to learn more about our efforts from this Communication on Progress. Thank you for your interest.
Sincerely,
Chief Executive Officer and President
Morton L. Mandel CEO Chair
Cleveland Clinic
About This Report
We are proud to present our 14th consecutive annual sustainability and global citizenship report detailing our work in the 2022 calendar year. Cleveland Clinic is committed to advancing practices that promote a just, thriving and green global economy. As such, we are a signatory of the United Nations (UN) Global Compact, a voluntary call to companies to align strategies and operations with universal principles on human and labor rights, environmental stewardship and anti-corruption, and take actions that advance societal goals. In this Communication on Progress, we include metrics, highlight stories and our approach for managing the various environmental, social and governance topics that are most important to our organization and valued stakeholders.
- Learn more about the United Nations Global Compact
- Learn more about the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals
In addition to addressing the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact, we prepared this report in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards. The GRI standards provide guidance on identifying, prioritizing and measuring progress on the management of an organization’s most significant societal, economic and environmental impacts.
More information on how our report links to the UNGC and GRI standards can be found in the index of our report.
Reporting Process & Oversight
An Executive Steering Committee comprised of leaders with responsibility for social, governance, economic and environmental impacts oversees our report. The Committee meets at least annually to discuss updates to the report, including alignment with evolving frameworks and standards, changes in material topics, stakeholder engagement processes and trends and events with the potential to impact report content.
A cross-functional team produces the report, conducts stakeholder interviews and ensures alignment with the GRI reporting framework. This team works with more than 20 internal divisions, departments and teams to develop and produce content for this report.
Photographs from were contributed by the following Cleveland Clinic photographers: Marty Carrick, Lisa DeJong, Donald Gerda, Shawn Green, Matt Kohlmann, Reen Nemeth and Annie O’Neill.
Stakeholder Engagement
Cleveland Clinic engages with many stakeholder groups, including patients, caregivers, surrounding communities, suppliers, industry organizations and peers, trade associations, federal and state agencies, regional and national philanthropic foundations, media outlets and others. By actively listening and speaking with our stakeholders on a regular basis, we deepen relationships that enable us to address challenges, create opportunities and deliver value more proactively. Some of the ways we engage stakeholders include surveys, interviews, meetings, events, calls and working groups.
Some of the external groups we engaged with for our materiality assessment and/or this report include:
- City of Cleveland.
- Department of Energy.
- Environmental Protection Agency.
- Evergreen Cooperatives.
- Florida Hospital Association.
- Health and Human Services.
- Healthcare Without Harm.
- Industry peers.
- Local, state and federal government stakeholders.
- National Institute of Health.
- North Union Farmers Market.
- Ohio Hospital Association.
- Our top suppliers.
- Practice Greenhealth.
Materiality & Boundary
Materiality
Cleveland Clinic conducted a thorough materiality assessment in calendar year 2021 to ensure the topics in our report reflected our most current and significant social, economic and environmental impacts. Conducting our materiality update in 2021—the year of our centennial—provided a unique opportunity to ask our stakeholders to reflect upon Cleveland Clinic’s legacy and solicit feedback on how we shape our future. For this report, which covers calendar year 2022 progress, we reviewed findings from the 2021 assessment with our Executive Steering Committee and made revisions to align with stakeholder feedback, changes in our organization’s priorities, and material updates on social, economic, governance and environmental issues.
Material topic identification
To identify material topics, we reviewed our previous materiality assessment, engaged subject matter experts on our Executive Steering Committee and researched local, national, industry and global issues and trends. We worked with members of the Executive Steering Committee to identify individuals and stakeholder groups to interview as part of our materiality assessment. For our 2021 materiality assessment, we identified 40-50 stakeholders to interview, half of which were internal and half of which were external. In addition to soliciting input on the prioritization of the material topics we identified, we asked all 40-50 stakeholders that we interviewed as part of our materiality assessment if there were any additional material topics we should consider in our assessment.
Stakeholder engagement
We aggregated input from 40-50 internal and external stakeholders related to our most significant impacts for our 2021 materiality assessment. During interviews, we asked stakeholders to provide feedback based on their areas of expertise, current events and trends. We also inquired about the significance of topics in relation to Cleveland Clinic’s vision, value chain, geographic footprint and more. In addition to interviews, we also incorporated survey data from some stakeholder groups in our materiality assessment.
Topic prioritization
Once we completed interviews and surveys with our stakeholders, we used their input, as well as other research and data on material issues to prioritize topics. Our Executive Steering Committee reviewed the prioritized list and approved the results.
Annual updates
Each year, we review material topics with our Executive Steering Committee. We ask members to propose relevant updates based on organizational activities and relationships, engagement with stakeholders and broader material topic trends and events. Updates are contingent upon the approval of the Committee. In this report, we organized our material topics by stakeholder group or category instead of by tier, and we no longer list topics that we are managing in addition to topics that are material.
Boundary
While we did not identify meaningful differences in the significance of topics by geography in our materiality assessment, we deploy strategies specific to the regions and communities in which we operate to address their unique needs. For example, our Community Health Strategy includes actions and programs to heal, hire and invest for the future, but we tailor programming for the communities our hospitals serve based on engagement with community members and outcomes of our Community Health Needs Assessments.
Organizational Profile
Located in Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Clinic is a nonprofit, multispecialty academic medical center that was founded in 1921 by four physicians who brought a novel group practice approach to patient care, research and caregiver training.
As of December 31, 2022, the Cleveland Clinic operated a 6,749-bed healthcare system with 23 hospitals and 265 outpatient locations. The system included a main campus in Cleveland and an additional 15 hospitals in Northeast Ohio. It also included five hospitals in Southeast Florida with more than 1,000 beds, a center for brain health in Las Vegas, executive health and sports health services at two locations in Toronto, a 364-bed hospital in Abu Dhabi and a 184-bed hospital and an outpatient facility in London.
Who Are Our Patients?
Cleveland Clinic is consistently recognized in the U.S. and throughout the world for its expertise and care. Patients came for treatment from every state and 128 countries, and we provided care for 3.4 million patients with 14 million encounters around the globe.
By the Numbers
Learn more about Cleveland Clinic's Facts & Figures
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