A Plea from Cleveland Clinic; December 21, 2021

12/21/21 email from Cleveland Clinic:

A Plea from Cleveland Clinic

"This past month has been sobering for many of us in healthcare. Nearly two years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, we’re seeing some of the highest volumes of patients with the disease in hospitals throughout the Midwest.

"Here at Cleveland Clinic, we’re caring for more than 800 patients with COVID-19 at our Ohio hospitals. Of these patients, more than 200 are in the intensive care unit. The majority of these patients are unvaccinated.  

Our Ohio emergency departments are filled. We have people waiting to get into our hospitals. Neighboring hospitals in our communities are facing the same issues. 

We’ve had to postpone many non-urgent surgeries in Ohio as we try to leave enough space for patients with COVID-19. Our physicians, nurses and caregivers are working around-the-clock to care for these sick patients. They are exhausted.  

Today, we come to you with a plea. Get vaccinated. Please. Whether you are due for your booster shot, undecided about getting your child vaccinated or have been leery of the vaccine all along. The science is clear. Vaccines save lives. Please, get vaccinated.

For those of you who have lost a loved one to COVID-19 this year, we extend our deepest sympathies. We feel your loss. We share in your grief. We, too, are heartbroken.

The only way we can get through this is together. Please do your part for yourself, your family and your community. Get vaccinated. Wear your mask, wash your hands and stay home if you're feeling ill. 

Cleveland Clinic will always be here for you when you need compassionate, high-quality care. The sun will rise tomorrow morning, and with it will bring renewed hope for a better day. 

We wish you and yours a joyous holiday season & a happy and healthy New Year."

How the Cleveland Clinic grows healthier while its neighbors stay sick; Politico, July 17, 2017

Dan Diamond, Politico; How the Cleveland Clinic grows healthier while its neighbors stay sick

"There’s an uneasy relationship between the Clinic — the second-biggest employer in Ohio and one of the greatest hospitals in the world — and the community around it. Yes, the hospital is the pride of Cleveland, and its leaders readily tout reports that the Clinic delivers billions of dollars in value to the state. It’s even “attracting companies that will come and grow up around us,” said Toby Cosgrove, the longtime CEO, pointing to IBM’s decision to lease a building on the edge of campus. “That will be great [for] jobs and economic infusion in this area.”

But it’s also a tax-exempt organization that, like many hospitals, fought to preserve its not-for-profit status in the years leading up to the Affordable Care Act. As a result, it doesn’t have to pay tens of millions of dollars in taxes, but it is supposed to fulfill a loosely defined commitment to reinvest in its community.

That community is poor, unhealthy and — in the words of one national neighborhood-ranking website — “barely livable.”"

Troubling examples of ‘pseudoscience’ at the Cleveland Clinic; Washington Post, 1/11/17

Daniel Summers, Washington Post; Troubling examples of ‘pseudoscience’ at the Cleveland Clinic

"People will understandably look for their own answers. Unfortunately, when no less than the president-elect is among those promulgating dangerous misinformation about vaccines, medical providers have to deal with a lot of false, misleading stuff their patients may find.

One way I deal with this is to give patients a list of resources that generally provide good, evidence-based advice. Though I can’t vet every single article they may publish, knowing a few sites that typically give clear, sound information is a valuable resource when patients ask.

Sadly, no matter how glowing its reputation or how superlative the care it routinely provides, I can’t include the Cleveland Clinic on that list. Knowing it promotes treatments that have no grounding in science, or that a patient could stumble upon a fearmongering article that makes baseless claims about the unspecified dangers of environmental toxins on its website, I can’t direct patients there in good faith. Considering its prominence as a renowned medical establishment, that’s a terrible shame.

Cleveland Clinic doc pens viral screed against vaccines, peers call it ‘post-truth medicine’; Washington Post, 1/10/17

Ben Guarino, Washington Post; Cleveland Clinic doc pens viral screed against vaccines, peers call it ‘post-truth medicine’

"An immense organization, the hospital operates a multi-specialty campus in Ohio and several medical centers around the globe. The hospital is well-known for robotic innovation, too, as well as its cardiac care. In 2015, the clinic had more than 6.6 million patient visits and revenue of $7.2 billion.

After becoming the director of the Wellness Institute, Neides secured a long-running monthly column at Cleveland.com. He published more than two dozen articles for the website since January 2014. And no one at the website edited or approved a particular article, according to Chris Quinn, a Cleveland.com vice president.

“Possibly, before the thing caught widescale attention, we would have unpublished it and sought revisions,” Quinn wrote on Monday. “That’s hindsight, though, so I can’t say for sure.” (The only editorial note on the blog post itself indicates that the article was briefly removed before being restored.)

Neides, in addition to damning formaldehyde, raised the specter of the widely debunked claim that there is a link between vaccine and autism."