Do No Harm claims racial discrimination in civil rights complaints against 2 health groups

By Tate Miller
The Center Square

Do No Harm filed two individual civil rights complaints against healthcare organization Kaiser Permanente and health center CommUnityCare for offering what it describes as racially discriminatory programs.

Do No Harm Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kurt Miceli told The Center Square that Kaiser Permanente’s program in question – the Black Health and Wellness Center – “uses racial segregation to address purported health disparities,” methods which are “illegal, immoral, and unfounded.” The program is based out of Portland.

Meanwhile, “CommUnityCare is acting illegally and immorally by separating patients based on race” with its “Black Men’s Health Clinic,” Miceli said.

As far as Kaiser Permanente’s “Center for Black Health and Wellness” is concerned, Miceli told The Center Square that “a business cannot advertise an offering aimed at a specific racial group and legitimately claim it does not discriminate.”

“Anti-discrimination laws and basic medical ethics require physicians to treat patients as individuals; race-based care violates these principles,” Miceli said.

Miceli explained that CommUnityCare’s Black Men’s Health Clinic “prioritizes black patients for healthcare services and further relies on the debunked racial concordance theory to assert racial preferences in hiring. CommUnityCare is based in Austin, Texas.

“Both the law and the Hippocratic Oath demand providers treat patients as individuals to the best of their ability, and we expect under the appropriate scrutiny CommUnityCare will make the necessary changes to eliminate this overt racial discrimination,” Miceli said.

According to Do No Harm’s press release, CommUnityCare is one of the state’s “largest Federally Qualified Health Centers” and therefore “receives a host of federally allotted benefits and is subject to multiple federal anti-discrimination laws.”

Kaiser Permanente is “the nation’s largest private not-for-profit healthcare organization” according to Do No Harm’s press release.

According to the release, Kaiser’s “Center for Black Health and Wellness,” is an “‘equity in action’ program meant to provide primary healthcare to black patients and ‘even out’ alleged health disparities between black and white individuals.”

Both this “inherently discriminatory mission” and its very name “communicates to members of other racial groups that they are unwelcome,” violating Title VI.

As Kirt Miceli told The Center Square, Kaiser’s center “also appears to justify race-based clinician hiring with the discredited ‘racial concordance’ theory — the myth that patients benefit from seeing a doctor of the same skin color.”

“Multiple systematic reviews show no outcome benefits from racial concordance,” Miceli said. “Worse, this approach only serves to undermine trust in the doctor-patient relationship.”

Do No Harm has extensively covered the subject of racial concordance in the past.

Neither Kaiser Permanente nor CommUnityCare have yet responded to The Center Square’s individual requests for comment.

Do No Harm filed its complaints with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights.

In a statement to The Center Square’, HHS said the Office for Civil Rights does not comment on open or potential investigations.