Cleveland Clinic Foundation: NIH Support Disclosures and Shared Reporting Credentials

Cleveland Clinic Foundation agreed to pay $7,600,000 to resolve False Claims Act allegations involving NIH support disclosures and shared reporting credentials. The government alleged that applications and progress reports omitted a principal investigator’s foreign research funding and time already committed elsewhere, while employees used shared passwords to make some of those submissions. For someone inside a research office, the connection matters: what the investigator disclosed, what the institution certified, and who could send the report.

The Justice Department announced the settlement on May 17, 2024. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio worked together on the case. The allegations concerned three National Institutes of Health grant awards. We see the absurdity: millions to settle allegations about truthful reporting, and no admission.

What NIH Other-Support Disclosures Were Meant to Show

NIH other-support disclosures tell the agency whether a researcher has time for the proposed project, whether other funding duplicates it, and whether financial interests may affect the researcher’s objectivity. NIH requires that information in applications and throughout the life of a grant, including follow-up documents. A progress report is another point at which the institution must give the agency the full picture.

This civilian grant fraud case concerns federal assistance for research. Here, the government’s allegations centered on the information NIH received about the person expected to carry out the research.

The government alleged that Cleveland Clinic repeatedly failed to disclose pending or active grants from foreign institutions. Those grants provided financial assistance for the principal investigator’s research and already obligated the investigator’s time. Cleveland Clinic allegedly falsely certified that its submissions were true and accurate.

That is why the other-support record matters to the award decision. NIH uses it to assess the proposed work against commitments elsewhere. The question runs through the grant’s life: did the agency receive the information it needed each time the institution certified its account?

NIH’s research funds are limited, and institutions compete for them. We see a basic fairness problem in the alleged omissions: an institution reporting its researcher’s commitments fully has to compete against an application that leaves some of those commitments out.

The Three Grants and the Covered Period

The executed settlement agreement identifies grants R01 HL121358, R01 HL126729 and R01 HL138465. Its covered period runs from November 1, 2013 through May 31, 2020. The government alleged that Cleveland Clinic designated the same employee as principal investigator on each award.

How Shared Reporting Credentials Entered the Allegations

Shared reporting credentials allegedly enabled employees to submit some of the reports that omitted the principal investigator’s foreign grant support. The Justice Department said Cleveland Clinic permitted employees to share passwords in violation of NIH policies, giving them inappropriate access to the agency’s online grant reporting platform.

The access allegation connects the missing disclosures to the people making the submissions. An account name, the person preparing a report and the person actually sending it are separate parts of that inquiry.

A grant administrator may know how a report moved through review. A researcher may know which outside commitment it omitted. Someone responsible for reporting access may know whose credentials were available to the people submitting it. Those different views can explain how an incomplete statement became an institutional submission.

Cleveland Clinic allegedly certified accuracy while allowing shared access through which some inaccurate submissions reached NIH. We expect an institution certifying accuracy to control both what it reports and who can submit it.

What NIH Required Afterward

NIH imposed Specific Award Conditions on all Cleveland Clinic grants following allegations involving three awards.

A high-level Cleveland Clinic employee had to personally attest to the truth, completeness and accuracy of all other grant support information the institution supplied to NIH. The corrective action plan had to include an assessment of internal controls for other-support and foreign-component reporting. NIH also required mandatory training covering disclosure requirements, research security and cybersecurity.

The institution had to develop an improvement plan for its controls, with oversight at the institutional level to confirm that principal investigators’ disclosures were true, complete and accurate. We read those requirements as an answer to the gap between a researcher’s account and the institution’s certification. NIH wanted senior responsibility for the information, training for the people handling it, and a process for checking it.

Outside Support and Research Time in Other Grant Cases

Stanford University also settled allegations of undisclosed foreign research support. Its federal grant settlement included NASA and National Science Foundation awards. The allegations concerned current and pending support omitted from grant proposals. The connection to Cleveland Clinic is the information the funding agency needs about commitments outside the project it is being asked to support.

At The Scripps Research Institute, the government alleged that time spent on new grant applications, teaching, committee work and administration was charged to existing NIH projects without adequate effort accounting.

How Much Money Can a Whistleblower Get From a Qui Tam Lawsuit?

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers. For a research insider, the starting point is the connection between the grant, the inaccurate disclosure and the people who knew the underlying commitments. We work with you to build your strongest case from what you know about those commitments and disclosures.

You Know What the Grant Reports Left Out

If you know which research commitments disappeared from an NIH submission, or how shared credentials let that submission through, speak to one of our whistleblower experts about what NIH never saw. We connect your understanding of the research office with the funding and reporting decisions, build the case with you, and bring in research grant fraud whistleblower lawyers. You have our partnership from the first conversation through the pursuit of a recovery.