But cutting the Hennepin County’s $50 million DEI budget would make more sense
Hospitals are inherently—and often unempathetically—rational. A physician without common sense is dangerous to his patients. A hospital run by people without common sense will go broke and quite possibly hurt many people.
Unfortunately for the patients at Hennepin Healthcare (also known as Hennepin County Medical Center or HCMC), the hospital is now being run by the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners. This board took over for an ad hoc group who unsuccessfully worked to save the hospital. Both groups mistakenly believed the key to financially rescuing the hospital was to enact a wide range of “human services” programs aimed primarily at social and climate justice.
HCMC now faces a projected $50 million operating deficit for 2026 and up to $1.7 billion in cumulative losses over the next decade. It has already eliminated 100 beds, frozen retirement contributions, and is asking taxpayers for a $340 million per year tax increase to bail it out.
Despite these dire conditions, Hennepin County continues to pour tens of millions of dollars into DEI initiatives, identity-based trainings, and climate activism. These decisions—made by county politicians now in charge of the hospital—threaten core medical services, including Level I trauma care, medical education, and burn care. In short, HCMC is experiencing a classic case of “Go Woke, Go Broke.”
Hennepin Healthcare’s 2023 Health Equity Report reveals the extent of these social justice budget priorities. The hospital conducted 386 DEI coaching sessions across 61 departments. It delivered mandatory LGBTQ+ education on topics such as “pronouns, deadnaming, trans identities, and allyship.” Staff attended BIPOC-only healing retreats featuring art, spiritual, and physical components. The hospital also hosted a large Juneteenth celebration that included elder storytelling, flag-raising, documentaries, and live music in partnership with local Black businesses. It held four Youth Summits targeting American Indian, Latine, and other specific ethnic youth groups, complete with tailored career demonstrations. Doula programs were explicitly framed around combating “structural racism” and focused on “Black birthing people” (formerly known as moms).
DEI Trumps direct care
Cultural Navigators served 1,700 patients while launching race-specific community groups. The hospital even revised its smoking policy to permit the indoor burning of sacred herbs—violating the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act—so patients could participate in religious ceremonies. Other religious initiatives included an iPad-based Islamic call-to-prayer program and specialized signage to help Muslim patients determine the correct direction to face during prayer (known as the qibla, which points toward the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia).
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) recognized HCMC for these religious accommodations. In a statement, Jaylani Hussein, Executive Director of CAIR-MN, said: “We welcome the continued efforts to better accommodate the religious needs of Muslim patients.” Approximately six percent of HCMC patients are Muslim.
The 2024 Health Equity Report link has since been removed from the HCMC website—likely because it had even less to do with trauma care, medical education, and healing burn wounds.
DEI is the wrong priority
In the same year its Trauma Center closed 100 beds, Hennepin County spent over $50 million on “disparity elimination,” including $10 million on “climate resilience.” That $50 million is exactly the amount HCMC needed to break even. Planting 70,540 square feet of urban vegetable gardens is nice, but it won’t teach medical residents how to float a Swan-Ganz catheter. Teaching 27,440 residents about the impacts of clean energy, climate preparedness, and extreme heat may be important to some, but it won’t save the life of a victim of an automobile accident or gunshot wound.
See Also: https://www.americanexperiment.org/magazine/article/save-hcmc
