The Joint Commission (TJC) is familiar to healthcare professionals as the entity that has them scrambling to prepare in the days and weeks prior to an accreditation survey of their facilities. The patient safety realm is a large part of TJC’s mission to ensure healthcare organizations “excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value” for the public. But there’s a new National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) that claims identifying patients by race and ethnicity – rather than as individuals – will make “safety” a priority.
Based on an element of the Leadership chapter of TJC’s accreditation standards (LD.04.03.08) “which addresses healthcare disparities as a quality and safety priority,” NPSG 16 took effect July 1, says the TJC’s website (archived link). Although the accreditation requirements aren’t changing, TJC adds, “the change is being made to increase the focus on improving healthcare equity versus reducing healthcare disparities.” This is outside the usual tone of the NPSGs over the past twenty years, which traditionally focus on true patient safety issues such as improving staff communication and using medications safely. NPSG.16.01.01 states:
Improving healthcare equity is a quality and patient safety priority. For example, healthcare disparities in the patient population are identified and a written plan describes ways to improve healthcare equity.
To achieve this NPSG (which is being extended into 2024), hospitals and other healthcare facilities seeking TJC accreditation, including ambulatory and behavioral healthcare organizations, are required to:
- Identify an individual to lead activities to improve healthcare equity.
- Assess patients’ health-related social needs.
- Analyze quality and safety data to identify disparities.
- Develop an action plan to improve healthcare equity.
- Act when the organization does not meet the goals in its action plan.
- Inform key stakeholders about progress to improve healthcare equity.
“Organizations need established leaders and standardized structures and processes in place to detect and address healthcare disparities,” TJC says in one of its R3 Report (Requirement, Rationale, Reference) documents, emphasizing again that a focus on a patient’s racial and ethnic identity is on par with essential safety concerns.
“These efforts should be fully integrated with existing quality improvement activities within the organization like other priority issues such as infection prevention and control, antibiotic stewardship, and workplace violence,” TJC states.
TJC’s requirement, however, of the identification of a “leader” of an organization’s “healthcare equity” activities, along with “standardized structures and processes” in order to “detect and address healthcare disparities” sets up another bureaucracy focused on political identity groups, rather than individualized patient care.
The commission appears to try to refute this criticism with the claim it will be focusing on “health-related social needs (HRSNs)” of patients, rather than the population-centered “social determinants of health (SDOH).”
HRSNs, TJC argues, are a “proximate cause of poor health outcomes for individual patients.”
“Understanding individual patients’ HRSNs can be critical for designing practical, patient-centered care plans,” the commission continues its argument, using the examples of “a care plan for tight control of diabetes may be unsafe for someone with food insecurity, and outpatient radiation therapy may be impractical for someone who lacks reliable transportation to treatment.”
All healthcare organizations, however, have social work services already in place to assist patients with special needs to obtain necessary medical treatments. Setting up and funding a new bureaucracy based on DEI ideology and activism seems more politically expedient than required for “safe and effective care of the highest quality and value.” Such mandates impose even more burdens on healthcare providers to address patient socioeconomic issues, rather than focus on delivering quality medical care.
Hospitals and other healthcare organizations seeking Joint Commission accreditation are invited to use the “Health Care Equity Accreditation Resource Center” in order to meet the new standards. But even with such a robust collection of resources, it is difficult to determine exactly how TJC defines health care equity. “And although health care equity is often viewed through a social justice lens,” TJC says, “we understand it to be first and foremost a quality-of-care problem.” Before “sustainable improvement” in health outcomes for minorities can be attained, institutions must start by “understanding the root causes and implementing targeted standards of care,” TJC claims.
Do No Harm Chairman Stanley Goldfarb, M.D. recently pointed out how the evidence to support racial inequity as the root cause of health disparities simply isn’t out there.
“The research establishment studying racial disparities in healthcare has a big problem,” Goldfarb stated in a piece in May at City Journal. Researchers have made “a concerted effort to ignore any literature” that contradicts their belief that differences in health outcomes are due to race-based factors.
The former associate dean of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine asserted that “the largest study of racial concordance, which included 56,000 patients, failed to show a benefit.” Yet other publications in the literature that provide “useful information about actual healthcare outcomes” have been largely ignored.
With NPSG 16, TJC is disregarding the difference between eliminating health disparities and producing health equity. Efforts aimed at removing health disparities include implementation of programs and processes with the goal of improving the delivery of healthcare for everyone. However, measures to create health equity are focused only on patient groups that meet certain racial identity criteria, while doing nothing to innovate healthcare delivery for groups of patients who do not fall into those categories. Regardless of the latest labels used to describe it, the promotion of “health equity” is a discriminatory practice.
The Joint Commission once used the best available scientific evidence to set its standards for improving patient safety and quality of care. Considering its level of influence over the delivery of services across the continuum of patient care in more than 22,000 organizations, TJC must return to being guided by facts, not ideology, as a means to achieve patient safety goals.
Do No Harm Files Amicus Brief In Support of Texas’ Efforts to Protect Children From Harmful “Gender Medicine”
Uncategorized Texas Gender Ideology State government, State legislature Commentary Do No Harm StaffAdd Texas to the long list of states where Do No Harm is taking action to protect children from dangerous gender ideology and medical treatments.
On Friday, December 22, 2023, we submitted an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief to the Supreme Court of Texas, showing support for the state’s efforts to uphold its law prohibiting the practice of experimental gender medicine on minors. The plaintiffs challenging the law include physicians who are practicing so-called “gender-affirming care” and others who want these harmful interventions to continue. In the brief, Do No Harm explains that:
We are watching the developments of this litigation, and oral arguments will take place in the coming weeks. Do No Harm hopes that the Court will not be misled, and will uphold Texas’s law (SB14) to protect children from these harmful and irreversible treatments.
Read the full text of the amicus brief here.
Do No Harm Sues Louisiana Governor to Block Racial Discrimination in Medical Board Appointments
Uncategorized Louisiana DEI Medical Board Press Release Do No Harm StaffThe lawsuit argues the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners appointment criteria is unconstitutional
On January 4, 2024, medical watchdog Do No Harm filed a lawsuit against Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards due to unlawful racial mandates requiring the governor to exclude non-minority candidates for a certain number of positions of the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners.
The lawsuit, filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of Do No Harm, alleges that the racial mandate is unconstitutional in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Do No Harm seeks a permanent prohibitory injunction preventing Governor Edwards from enforcing or attempting to enforce the racial mandate.
“Choosing candidates to oversee the critical aspect of the state’s medical field based on anything other than merit is corrosive to the mission and perception of the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners,” said Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, Chairman of Do No Harm. “This type of discriminatory mandate is not only unconstitutional, but also reflects the politicization of healthcare that is dangerous for patients and physicians. Expertise should be the determining factor, and Louisiana must get rid of discriminatory practices to refocus on medical excellence.”
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Shreveport Division.
Background
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. With more than 6,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and in 14 countries, DNH has achieved more than 4,900 media hits in top-tier publications and garnered widespread attention through numerous broadcast news appearances.
The Nebraska Legislature Proposes Implicit Bias Training Requirements for Health Professionals
Uncategorized Nebraska DEI State legislature Commentary Do No Harm StaffYet another state is seeking to impose offensive DEI-related training requirements onto its physicians, nurses, and multiple healthcare professionals.
Lawmakers in Nebraska have introduced a bill with the intent “to require implicit bias or diversity, equity, and inclusion training for medical providers credentialed under the Uniform Credentialing Act.” Legislative Bill 291 (LB291) will compel all healthcare professionals – even veterinary medicine providers – to complete DEI or implicit bias training on an annual basis.
With new credential applications and renewals that begin on or after October 1, 2024, licensees must complete “a program designed to increase awareness of prejudices and partialities” and “reduce prejudice and discrimination.” The result is purported to be “reducing inequitable health treatments and outcomes.” To administer LB291, the total cost to Nebraska taxpayers is estimated to be $328,896. This money would have a real impact on health care disparities if it were committed to improving outreach programs to communities with insufficient health care access.
Do No Harm has explained that “implicit bias” is a concept that places people into identity groups based on skin color, labeling them as either the “oppressed” or the “oppressors.” Despite constant claims to the contrary, there simply is no evidence that medical professionals deliver patient care differently based on their patients’ immutable characteristics. A so-called “test” that has been widely used to measure an individual’s implicit biases has been proven to be unreliable and based on flawed science. Yet, state legislatures like Nebraska continue to create DEI training mandates that place additional burdens on healthcare providers who are already struggling with burnout and constant demands for their time.
States like Oklahoma and Texas have taken measures to remove divisive and dangerous DEI initiatives from their public universities, and Kentucky recently rescinded its implicit bias training requirement for nurses. Policymakers in Nebraska need to give serious consideration this trend, as well as the negative impact that LB291 will have on its 114,000 healthcare professionals.
Vituity’s (CEP AMERICA LLC.) Racially Discriminatory Incentive Program Ending Following Do No Harm’s Challenge
Uncategorized DEI Press ReleaseDo No Harm agreed to settle its lawsuit against the unlawful and discriminatory incentive program offered by Vituity. The medical staffing agency said it would end the “Black Physician Leadership Incentive, ” an incentive program (with a sign-on bonus of up to $100,000) solely offered to black physicians. After Do No Harm sued, Vituity quietly took down the advertisement for the Black Physician Leadership Incentive from its website.
The federal court observed that Do No Harm made a “compelling argument” that Vituity was “blatantly violat[ing] various federal laws.” The court also found that it was “undisputed” that Vituity’s program “discriminate[d] based on race.”
Moving forward, Vituity will no longer consider race when giving doctors incentives.
“The end of Vituity’s racist program is a victory for patients. Medical professionals should be hired on merit alone and medical organizations should abandon the divisive identity politics being used as the basis to implement the debunked theory of racial concordance. Patients want and deserve the best doctors and the best medical care regardless of skin color or the racial makeup of their physician.” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, board chair of Do No Harm.
Rutgers University Shows Support for Radical Activist Organizations – And Seeks Med School Applicants Dedicated to Social Justice
Uncategorized New Jersey DEI Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers University Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffRutgers University and its schools of medicine have long been dedicated to pushing politicized ideologies in its medical education programs and application policies, and the M.D. program selection process seeks to determine which of its applicants will be similarly committed to the social justice agenda. But most concerning is that the university’s activism has included radical and discriminatory causes.
The Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) in Newark and the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) in Piscataway both have active DEI offices with many of the typical “resources” to promote its social justice positions. RWJMS even says that its “racial and ethnic diversity and equity” efforts for faculty and student numbers specifically target “Blacks and Hispanics.”
This perspective is reflected in the RWJMS and NJMS secondary essay questions for applicants to the M.D. degree program. Since the 2018-2019 application cycle, the school has been asking for information to identify students according to identity groups and activist causes:
As we reported in October, “humanism” is a progressive viewpoint that “advocates the extension of participatory democracy and the expansion of the open society, standing for human rights and social justice.” Of course, while this sounds like a worthwhile approach, what it really means is discrimination based on group characteristics and has led to the revolting surge in antisemitism that is damaging our nation.
It’s no wonder that the medical schools at Rutgers have evolved to adopt these philosophies. In June 2020, the Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS) Faculty Affairs office took an additional step in fostering radical activism with a post by the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Inclusion, and Development. There were no words associated with this post – titled “white coats for black lives”–which featured a picture of students wearing white lab coats staging a “die-in.”
During the winter of 2021, RWJMS continued its support of White Coats for Black Lives (WC4BL) with a 48-page publication describing “A Quest for Anti-Racism.”
The piece features multiple photographs of medical students kneeling with fists in the air and holding signs promoting Black Lives Matter. It also confirms RWJMS’s policy on student selection: “Rather than only prioritizing on standardized test scores,” the article states, “the medical school values a candidate’s commitment to service, experience working with underserved populations, and understanding of social determinants of health.”
Do No Harm has publicized how WC4BL (an offshoot of Black Lives Matter) has supported anti-Semitic activity at other medical schools, such as the University of Minnesota, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Utah. And, as the faculty at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA have learned, the anti-racism dogma only serves to exacerbate discrimination and division.
State after state across America are waking up to the destructiveness of DEI in institutions of higher education, implementing legislation to remove those practices from their universities. Rutgers University must also take an objective look at its processes and practices, and resolve to create knowledgeable clinicians instead of social justice warriors.
Do No Harm Board Member Edward Blum Named 2023 Man of the Year
Uncategorized United States Op-EdWashington Free Beacon Staff
December 31, 2023
2023 Man of the Year: Edward Blum
It’s not clear that the Civil Rights Movement could have succeeded without the Jews.
Henry Moscowitz helped W.E.B. Du Bois found the NAACP. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel joined Martin Luther King Jr. in King’s march on Selma. Jewish donors supplied the capital for numerous civil rights organizations and black colleges, and in 1964, Jews made up half of the participants in the Freedom Summer project, a voter registration drive aimed at black Mississippians.
So it’s only fitting that the civil rights hero of our own time is himself a Jew—born to Yiddish-speaking cobblers, no less.
Since the 1990s, Edward Blum has worked tirelessly to dismantle a sordid, state-backed regime of racial discrimination that has structured and subverted nearly every institution in the United States. His first victory, in 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, chipped away at the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a patently unconstitutional law that gerrymanders electoral districts based on race and assumes all minorities vote the same way.
Read more at the Washington Free Beacon.
Do No Harm Closes Out 2023 With 40 Federal Civil Rights Investigations
Uncategorized Michigan DEI Western Michigan University Medical School Commentary Executive Do No Harm StaffIn December 2023, Do No Harm senior fellow Mark Perry secured two additional federal civil rights complaints against universities in Ohio and Michigan for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As we recently reported, the U.S. Department of Education’s (DOE) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is investigating Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (HCOM) for its Physician Diversity Scholars Program. Shortly thereafter, Perry also obtained a federal civil rights investigation against the Western Michigan University (WMU) School of Medicine for its Underrepresented in Medicine Visiting Elective Scholarship Program. The informational brochure for the program confirms that the eligibility criteria require the applicant to “identify as American Indian/Alaska Native, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, or Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander.”
While the brochure still contains the racially exclusive language in the eligibility requirements, the Visiting Medical Students page has been scrubbed of this language. At the time of Perry’s OCR complaint filing, the “Eligibility Requirements” stated that applicants “must identify as American Indian/Alaska Native, Black/African American, or Hispanic/Latino.”
Similar to the HCOM program, Perry called upon the DOE OCR to investigate the Visiting Scholars Program at WMU in lieu of the Health and Human Services (HHS) OCR. While there are partner medical facilities within WMed Health where students complete their electives, the school is extensively involved in supervising and administering the program, including granting credits at WMU for clinical work required for graduation.
Since our launch in April 2023, Do No Harm has filed more than 150 federal civil rights complaints with the DOE and HHS OCR offices against institutions of higher education that are discriminating on the basis of race and/or sex. These complaints have resulted in multiple favorable decisions so far to remove discriminatory and exclusionary eligibility criteria from scholarships, fellowships, and awards, or the complete discontinuation and removal of them from the universities’ websites. Our work to restore merit and achievement as the driver of the selection process in medical programs will continue into 2024 and beyond.
Racial Discrimination At the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society
Uncategorized United States DEI Medical association Commentary Do No Harm StaffAnother day, another racially discriminatory medical program.
The latest injustice comes from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, which is “dedicated to creating a world without blood cancers.” Apparently, it thinks racial discrimination can advance that goal, based on its Underrepresented Minority Medical Student Research Program (archived page).
The program’s discrimination is obvious. It’s only available to 2nd-to-4th-year medical students who are “Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino(a), American Indian/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander.” In other words, Whites and Asians need not apply.
This program is illegal and unconstitutional. It’s also morally unacceptable. And last but not least, it’s unjustifiable. The Society surely hopes this program will elevate physicians who can help minority patients with Leukemia or Lymphoma. But the best way to ensure they get the best treatment is to elevate the most talented physicians, regardless of race. There are many White and Asian physicians who would surely excel if this program was available to them.
More to the point, it won’t help to have more minority physicians paired with minority patients—a concept known as “racial concordance.” As Do No Harm demonstrates in a new report, studies show that racial concordance doesn’t improve health outcomes or decrease disparities. In fact, it’s more likely to harm patients by encouraging lower standards. Yet patients deserve the most qualified physicians, no matter their skin color.
The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society should be ashamed. Plenty of diverse candidates deserve a shot at this program, including less fortunate whites and Asians. The Society shouldn’t be surprised if someone files a lawsuit to end this blatant racial discrimination. The best course of action is for the Society to stop the discrimination on its own, immediately. Then it can get back to focusing on its real mission of curing blood cancer.
If you see a discriminatory scholarship or fellowship at your professional society, please let us know via our secure online portal.
Do No Harm Files Amicus Brief In Support of Oklahoma’s Law Protecting Children
Uncategorized Oklahoma Gender Ideology Public policy organization Commentary Do No Harm StaffOnce again, Do No Harm is engaged in the battle to protect children from gender ideology.
On Monday, December 18, Do No Harm filed an amicus brief along with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) in the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. The brief asks the Tenth Circuit to affirm the district court’s decision, which held that Oklahoma’s law prohibiting the practice of experimental gender medicine on minors is likely constitutional. In the brief, Do No Harm and OCPA explain that:
(1) the current scientific evidence reveals that the practice of experimental gender medicine on minors causes significant harm, carries serious unknown risks, and offers no proven benefit;
(2) the Court should not hesitate to depart from the purported objective recommendations put forth by the politically motivated medical interest groups opposing Oklahoma’s common-sense law; and
(3) the advocates of experimental gender medicine criticize any screening procedures for these interventions as too strict.
We are watching the developments of this filing and are hopeful that the Court will uphold Oklahoma’s law to protect children from these harmful and irreversible treatments.
Virginia May Force Physicians and Nurses Into Divisive Training
Uncategorized Virginia DEI State legislature Commentary Do No Harm StaffIs Virginia about to attack physicians and nurses—and even claim they’re racist? That’s the question now that the state House and Senate have introduced legislation that would mandate “unconscious bias” training as a condition of licensure. Such training is insulting, unsupported by the evidence, and inherently divisive—all while paving the way for racial discrimination.
“Unconscious bias” is another name for “implicit bias,” and either way, this concept holds that people are either victims or oppressors based on their skin color. That fact alone makes the concept deeply concerning, as it reflects a skin-deep understanding of human beings. People are more than their melanin, yet implicit bias training reduces individuals to a caricature based on group identity.
It gets worse. There is no evidence that medical professionals treat patients differently based on skin color, and in fact, physicians and nurses train to give everyone the best and most personalized care. Additionally, implicit bias tests have been widely condemned by scholars, while the creators of the most widely used test have admitted its severe limitations.
Implicit bias training is anything but harmless. By telling whites and Asians that they’re biased or even racist, it encourages them to provide different levels of care to patients based on skin color. Such preferential care is inherently discriminatory and has no place in medicine.
Virginia’s legislation would create one of the most aggressive implicit-bias training mandates in the nation. Every physician and nurse in the state would be forced to endure the training every time they apply for or renew their license—i.e., every few years. The constant race-based insults will worsen the crisis of burnout in the medical profession, while sowing divisive ideas across medicine.
Virginia’s medical professionals have devoted their lives to providing equal and excellent care to all. They deserve better than for their own state to attack them and tar them as racist.
Do No Harm Releases New Report: “Racial Concordance in Medicine: The Return of Segregation”
Uncategorized United States DEI Press Release Do No Harm StaffToday, Do No Harm released a new report on racial concordance in medicine entitled “The Return of Segregation.” This report debunks the narrative pushed by medical organizations and political leaders that matching the races of physicians and patients leads to better healthcare outcomes.
“Healthcare and media organizations continue to push racial concordance despite the weight of evidence against it,” said report author and Do No Harm Director of Research Ian Kingsbury. “These groups are playing a dangerous game by putting their politics over scientific evidence and cherry-picking preferred studies to reach their political goals. We hope our report puts to rest the fashionable but dangerous idea of racial segregation in medicine.”
“The research that claims to find evidence of the benefits of racial concordance in healthcare is generally of low quality,” said report co-author and Do No Harm Senior Fellow Jay Greene. “Even the studies that appear in higher-status journals have obvious and severe defects that prevent them from being offered as support for racial concordance. The fact that such low-quality research appears in top journals says more about the politicization of research than it does about racial concordance.”
“We all want to see the elimination of healthcare disparities, but without solid proof that racial concordance would benefit patients we needlessly racialize an aspect of American life and divide American communities,” said Do No Harm Chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb. “The same divisive identity politics pushed by supporters of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ is being used as the basis for racial concordance.”
Top Takeaways
Read the full report below.
Big Win: Oklahoma Bans University DEI Departments
Uncategorized Oklahoma DEI University of Oklahoma Medical School, State government Commentary Do No Harm StaffThree cheers for Oklahoma. On December 13, Governor Kevin Stitt took a major step toward rolling back divisive and discriminatory ideology at public universities, including the state’s two medical schools. So-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is now on the retreat in Oklahoma.
Gov. Stitt signed an executive order with multiple necessary reforms. University faculty, staff, students, and applicants are protected from being forced to sign “DEI statements” or other forms of woke loyalty oaths. What’s more, state funds and property can no longer be used toward for woke training or on departments that “grant preferential treatment” based on “race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.”
That’s essentially a ban on DEI departments. But DEI goes well beyond specific departments, which is why the Governor’s order also requires universities to review their overall DEI policies. That will sure bring plenty of disturbing policies to light.
The Governor rightly declared that “diversity is an asset that shouldn’t be abused to advance a political agenda.” He further stated that Oklahoma is now “taking politics out of education and focusing on preparing students for the workforce.”
Yet the President of the University of Oklahoma is trying to defend the indefensible. In a letter responding to the executive order, he stated “this news evokes deep concern and uncertainty about the future, and in many ways feels like a step backward.” In fact, Oklahoma’s reform is a huge step forward.
The OU President’s letter indicates that state universities and medical schools will surely try to get around this order. They’re obsessed with DEI and determined to continue spreading division and discrimination. DEI initiatives have embedded identity politics into all aspects of university life. The result of this has been to further group-based biases like anti-Semitism. Beyond Oklahoma, universities like Harvard and others are doubling down on DEI. Oklahoma schools likely want to do the same, regardless of state restrictions.
Do No Harm will be watching them closely. We’re grateful to Gov. Stitt for moving Oklahoma’s higher education in the right direction.
Senior Fellow Stephanie Winn Comments on “Conversion Therapy” Bans
Uncategorized United States Gender Ideology Federal government, State legislature Commentary Do No Harm StaffOn August 10, 2023, the Detroit News published an article by Do No Harm Senior Fellow and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Stephanie Winn on the truth behind “conversion therapy” bans.
Read Stephanie’s article below.
AAMC Pushes Race-Based Recruitment Tool Post-SCOTUS Ruling
Uncategorized United States DEI Accreditiing organization Commentary Do No Harm StaffThe U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the use of race-based admissions practices isn’t constitutional in higher education settings, including medical schools. But the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) continues to promote a recruiting tool that aggregates information on medical school applicants who “self-identify as being from groups historically underrepresented in medicine or who are economically disadvantaged.”
The AAMC, which oversees the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and cosponsors the accrediting body for all medical schools, appears to be continuing in their efforts to find ways to undermine the Court’s landmark ruling.
Do No Harm obtained a screenshot from the MCAT registration platform describing the “Medical Minority Applicant Registry” (Med-MAR), which requires the applicant to provide specific information about his or her race and ethnicity. The registrant must opt-in to this service, which AAMC says “enhances admission opportunities for students from groups historically underrepresented in medicine.”
This description has not changed since at least April 2021, which is the first time the program’s webpage was archived.
“If you choose to participate in Med-MAR, your basic biographical information and your MCAT scores will be distributed to the minority affairs and admission offices of AAMC-member schools and to select health-related agencies whose mission is to increase opportunities for students historically underrepresented in medicine,” AAMC tells applicants from racial and ethnic political identity groups.
They indicate by omission that whites and Asians need not apply:
Interestingly, the AAMC offers a disclaimer for the Med-MAR system: “Med-MAR serves only as a means of identifying and communicating the availability of applicants from groups who self-identify as underrepresented in medicine and/or as economically disadvantaged. No attempt is made by Med-MAR to advise students where to apply or to influence any admissions decisions.”
As Do No Harm noted in August, AAMC continues to push ways to erode the Court’s ruling.
“Nothing in the Supreme Court decision compels us to deviate from our goal of diversifying the health care workforce,” AAMC CEO David Skorton said during a webinar with medical school leaders in July.
Strategies promoted by AAMC include:
Do No Harm has been following AAMC’s plunge into radical Critical Race Theory-inspired DEI practices for some time. And, because of its heavy influence over medical school officials, the organization has taken these institutions along with it.
In November 2022 – prior to the Court’s ruling against affirmative action policies – Do No Harm Chairman Stanley Goldfarb, M.D. sounded the alarm that medical schools seeking accreditation were being coerced into expanding their woke practices.
In a survey of 101 institutions, Goldfarb wrote at the New York Post, AAMC asked schools to respond to 89 questions about whether they employ particular DEI practices.
The Do No Harm chairman revealed the results of AAMC’s “report card”:
Goldfarb observed at the time that medical schools have organized and well-funded bureaucracies in place pushing woke ideology on both faculty and students.
“These efforts take away time and money from actual education,” he asserted, adding:
In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts noted that implementing “application essays or other means” is not a valid tactic for universities to get to the results they had prior to the decision ending race-based admissions. “In other words,” he continued, “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual – not on the basis of race.” Workarounds such as these will undoubtedly be successfully challenged. Yet, considering AAMC’s continued use of the Med-MAR applicant registry service for specific racial and ethnic groups, not much has changed in this organization in the wake of the Court’s ruling.
Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine Scholars Program Is the Subject of a Federal Civil Rights Investigation
Uncategorized Ohio DEI Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine Medical School Commentary Executive Do No Harm StaffA program at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (OUHCOM) is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for illegal racial discrimination – and the school wasted no time in scrubbing its website of the evidence.
Offered in partnership with the Cleveland Clinic, the Physician Diversity Scholars Program “takes a proactive approach to building diversity” by being “open to all underrepresented minority medical students” at OUHCOM (archived page here). “Underrepresented minority for the Heritage College,” the website stated, “is defined as Black/African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American/Alaskan Native and pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian.”
Limiting eligibility to specific racial groups while excluding others violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race.
The modified webpage now says that the program provides “purposeful and meaningful health care interactions with community populations that are underrepresented in medicine.”
At the time the complaint was filed with the Cleveland OCR, the “How to Apply” page provided further evidence of OUHCOM’s intent to discriminate, reiterating the racial/ethnic groups that were eligible and instructing applicants to include a professional photograph (archived page here).
The cleanup was not as thorough on this page, as it still states, “The Physician Diversity Scholars program is open to all historically underrepresented students in medicine at Heritage College, Cleveland.” However, the specific racial/ethnic categories have been removed in the modified version.
Ohio taxpayers and the lawmakers who represent them must ask the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine why the school is willing to remove a discriminatory program only after a federal civil rights complaint is filed and an investigation is opened. Do No Harm will be monitoring for full resolution of our complaint.
Mizzou Med Claims “No DICE,” But Its Actions Suggest They Are Still Fully On Board With DEI
Uncategorized Missouri DEI University of Missouri School of Medicine Medical School Commentary Executive Do No Harm StaffThe University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine (Mizzou Med) said that it didn’t participate in the Association of American Medical Colleges’ (AAMC) Diversity, Inclusion, Culture, and Equity (DICE) Inventory, but its devotion to all things DEI raise the question of “why not?”
The DICE Inventory is an 89-question survey that 101 North American medical schools participated in during 2022. Institutions voluntarily submitted their yes/no answers to AAMC, indicating whether or not they engage in specific DEI-related initiatives, programs, or practices. Last year, Do No Harm submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to Mizzou Med for the school’s DICE Inventory response, but the Custodian of Records for the University of Missouri System told us, “I am informed there is no document responsive to your request.”
A follow-up query confirmed that Laura Henderson Kelley MD, MPH advised that no such document exists. Board certified in internal medicine and pediatrics, Dr. Henderson Kelley carries the title of “Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, Culture, and Equity (DICE),” and leads the school’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI).
Yet Mizzou Med follows the AAMC on other DEI-related concepts.
The Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Cluster document, received by Dr. Henderson Kelley in March 2022, further illustrates Mizzou Med’s dedication to the AAMC’s guidance on DEI. The document, supported by Dr. David Acosta, AAMC’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, provides direction “to assist you with the DEI work at your institutions.” The Cluster document includes “three portfolios” of Equity and Social Accountability (ESA); Workforce Diversity; and Organizational Inclusion and Development. For example, the Cluster document notes that the ESA Portfolio will help medical schools to become “anti-racist leaders who acknowledge and understand systemic racial inequities,” as well as adopting policies “that promote racial justice and equity.”
As reported in April, Mizzou Med provided its Class of 2024 orientees with the Common Read program “to facilitate meaningful conversations around health inequities and social injustice early in medical school education.” This aligns with the ESA Portfolio’s aims to “develop an emerging generation of physicians with an equity mindset” and “encourage the inclusion of anti-racism” in the curriculum. This conviction was readily apparent during the 2023 legislative season when 150 students at the medical school demanded that state lawmakers “protect our school’s right to require DEI education.”
The Class of 2024 was also informed by Steven Zweig MD, dean of medical school, that their newly received white coats symbolize “a commitment to fighting racism in medicine.”
The Mizzou Med Class of 2024 is also aligned with the AAMC’s Workforce Diversity Portfolio aim of increasing the numbers of students “who are underrepresented in the health professions,” and prepared an infographic to illustrate it. AAMC recommends holding career fairs and workshops for “diversifying the next generation of doctors” or participating in the “Action Collaborative for Black Men in Medicine” to achieve that metric. The university has long shown that it fosters discrimination on the basis of race with scholarships it offers within the School of Medicine. The Office for Civil Rights is currently investigating Mizzou Med for ten scholarships that violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits such discrimination.
But the Cluster document’s most concerning recommendations come from the Organizational Inclusion and Development Portfolio, as it recommends actions for “equity-minded medical schools” that infuse the DEI agenda into every corner of their operations.
A new six-session faculty course titled “Addressing and Reducing Cultural Bias in Medicine” was recently sponsored by Mizzou Med, featuring instruction on “medical racism” and “privilege, implicit bias, and microaggressions.” The topics in this course demonstrate how the school aligns with initiatives recommended by the AAMC in the Cluster document, such as the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-racism (IDEAs) Learning Series and the Restorative Justice in Academic Medicine (RJAM) training program.
These concepts do not reflect what it means to receive an education in the art and science of medicine. Do No Harm calls on Mizzou Med to return its focus to the patient-based training it claims to offer, which is in the best interests of the individuals its graduates who will one day be responsible for diagnosing and healing.
The Joint Commission Requires ‘Safety Goal’ of DEI’s ‘Healthcare Equity’ for Organizations Seeking Accreditation
Uncategorized United States DEI Accreditiing organization Commentary Do No Harm StaffThe Joint Commission (TJC) is familiar to healthcare professionals as the entity that has them scrambling to prepare in the days and weeks prior to an accreditation survey of their facilities. The patient safety realm is a large part of TJC’s mission to ensure healthcare organizations “excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value” for the public. But there’s a new National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) that claims identifying patients by race and ethnicity – rather than as individuals – will make “safety” a priority.
Based on an element of the Leadership chapter of TJC’s accreditation standards (LD.04.03.08) “which addresses healthcare disparities as a quality and safety priority,” NPSG 16 took effect July 1, says the TJC’s website (archived link). Although the accreditation requirements aren’t changing, TJC adds, “the change is being made to increase the focus on improving healthcare equity versus reducing healthcare disparities.” This is outside the usual tone of the NPSGs over the past twenty years, which traditionally focus on true patient safety issues such as improving staff communication and using medications safely. NPSG.16.01.01 states:
To achieve this NPSG (which is being extended into 2024), hospitals and other healthcare facilities seeking TJC accreditation, including ambulatory and behavioral healthcare organizations, are required to:
“Organizations need established leaders and standardized structures and processes in place to detect and address healthcare disparities,” TJC says in one of its R3 Report (Requirement, Rationale, Reference) documents, emphasizing again that a focus on a patient’s racial and ethnic identity is on par with essential safety concerns.
“These efforts should be fully integrated with existing quality improvement activities within the organization like other priority issues such as infection prevention and control, antibiotic stewardship, and workplace violence,” TJC states.
TJC’s requirement, however, of the identification of a “leader” of an organization’s “healthcare equity” activities, along with “standardized structures and processes” in order to “detect and address healthcare disparities” sets up another bureaucracy focused on political identity groups, rather than individualized patient care.
The commission appears to try to refute this criticism with the claim it will be focusing on “health-related social needs (HRSNs)” of patients, rather than the population-centered “social determinants of health (SDOH).”
HRSNs, TJC argues, are a “proximate cause of poor health outcomes for individual patients.”
“Understanding individual patients’ HRSNs can be critical for designing practical, patient-centered care plans,” the commission continues its argument, using the examples of “a care plan for tight control of diabetes may be unsafe for someone with food insecurity, and outpatient radiation therapy may be impractical for someone who lacks reliable transportation to treatment.”
All healthcare organizations, however, have social work services already in place to assist patients with special needs to obtain necessary medical treatments. Setting up and funding a new bureaucracy based on DEI ideology and activism seems more politically expedient than required for “safe and effective care of the highest quality and value.” Such mandates impose even more burdens on healthcare providers to address patient socioeconomic issues, rather than focus on delivering quality medical care.
Hospitals and other healthcare organizations seeking Joint Commission accreditation are invited to use the “Health Care Equity Accreditation Resource Center” in order to meet the new standards. But even with such a robust collection of resources, it is difficult to determine exactly how TJC defines health care equity. “And although health care equity is often viewed through a social justice lens,” TJC says, “we understand it to be first and foremost a quality-of-care problem.” Before “sustainable improvement” in health outcomes for minorities can be attained, institutions must start by “understanding the root causes and implementing targeted standards of care,” TJC claims.
Do No Harm Chairman Stanley Goldfarb, M.D. recently pointed out how the evidence to support racial inequity as the root cause of health disparities simply isn’t out there.
“The research establishment studying racial disparities in healthcare has a big problem,” Goldfarb stated in a piece in May at City Journal. Researchers have made “a concerted effort to ignore any literature” that contradicts their belief that differences in health outcomes are due to race-based factors.
The former associate dean of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine asserted that “the largest study of racial concordance, which included 56,000 patients, failed to show a benefit.” Yet other publications in the literature that provide “useful information about actual healthcare outcomes” have been largely ignored.
With NPSG 16, TJC is disregarding the difference between eliminating health disparities and producing health equity. Efforts aimed at removing health disparities include implementation of programs and processes with the goal of improving the delivery of healthcare for everyone. However, measures to create health equity are focused only on patient groups that meet certain racial identity criteria, while doing nothing to innovate healthcare delivery for groups of patients who do not fall into those categories. Regardless of the latest labels used to describe it, the promotion of “health equity” is a discriminatory practice.
The Joint Commission once used the best available scientific evidence to set its standards for improving patient safety and quality of care. Considering its level of influence over the delivery of services across the continuum of patient care in more than 22,000 organizations, TJC must return to being guided by facts, not ideology, as a means to achieve patient safety goals.
University of Missouri Medical School Official Propagates the AAMC’s DEI Mission
Uncategorized Missouri DEI University of Missouri School of Medicine Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffThe Association of American Medical Colleges’ (AAMC) powerful dual role in overseeing the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and cosponsoring the accrediting body for all medical education programs in the U.S. puts pressure on the schools to adopt its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda. Elite universities employ DEI proponents to embed this organization’s ideologies into all aspects of their programs, and the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine (Mizzou Med) is no exception.
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents obtained by Do No Harm show how Robin Clay, M.Ed., the manager for DEI initiatives at Mizzou Med, pushed out highly politicized AAMC events and trainings throughout 2022. According to his MU bio, “Robin is a passionate student advocate who is excited to train future, patient-centered, and socially conscious physicians.”
For example, Clay sought permission from Dr. Laine Walker, Associate Dean for Student Programs, to forward a message from an AAMC listserv regarding Discrimination Faced by Latina/o/x/e, Hispanic, of or [sic] Spanish Origin Identified Students/Alumni During Medical School/Residency Application Process. “May I distribute to my URM [underrepresented in medicine] group?” he asked Walker. AAMC was informing DEI officials of an upcoming needs assessment of “LHS+ medical students and alumni” to produce a report that would inform “best practices to reduce the burden of discrimination.”
Additionally, on September 1, Clay received an AAMC notice of an upcoming “GSA [Group on Student Affairs] Working Group on Medical Student Wellbeing Fall Community Call Series” event, which said that “the wellbeing of medical students depends on their learning environment, school structures and processes, and institutional culture.” “In this interactive session, presenters will discuss structural and systematic issues (p/f grading, asynchronous learning) and curricula that impact wellbeing,” the statement continues. “Participants will leave with practical tools to design and implement curricula using different teaching modalities at their home institution and to advocate for systemic and structural initiatives to support medical student wellbeing.” What this translates into is the lowering of academic standards in the name of perceived systemic inequities.
On the following day, Clay forwarded to his colleagues AAMC’s promotion of a CGSA “Community Call on Signaling and the Supplemental Application.” “This is a good community call that may help better advise our 4th year students,” Clay wrote. “I wonder if there are ways we can use this to improve diverse residents in our programs,” he added.
On November 30, 2021, he forwarded an announcement for a highly controversial webinar to a University of Missouri staff member asking, “How can we send this to the president…” The January 2022 webinar, titled Socially Accountable Admissions: Using a different lens to evaluate medical school applicants and promote workforce diversity, was presented by AAMC in cooperation with the UC Davis medical school.
As Do No Harm reported in June 2023, the presenters provided information to admissions officials, including statements that MCAT scores are of limited value and their use leads to “overrepresentation” of Asian physicians.
Mizzou Med currently demonstrates its ongoing alignment with AAMC’s DEI mission by designating “societal and cultural issues” as a component of the medical education program, establishing minimal academic standards for admission, and maintaining a robust DEI office.
Do No Harm will be monitoring the actions of Mizzou Med for their commitment to DEI instead of medical education in the months and years to come.