Conor P. Delaney

Conor P. Delaney MD, MCh, PhD, FRCSI, FACS, FASCRS, FRCSI (Hon.) is an Irish-American colorectal surgeon, Chairman of the Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, and Professor of Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. He is both a Fellow and Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and a Fellow of both the American College of Surgeons and American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons.

Delaney's research contributions include various aspects of surgery, surgical cost-efficiency and surgical education, while his clinical research contributions include developing enhanced recovery pathways in minimally invasive laparoscopic colorectal surgery, carcinoma of the colon and rectum, Crohn's disease and Ulcerative colitis, sphincter-saving surgery, re-operative abdominal surgery, and colonoscopy.

Delaney earned his medical degree from the University College of Dublin School of Medicine in 1989, winning the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital gold medal in surgery. In 1992, he became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and earned his master's degree in surgery (MCh) in 1994. He earned his Ph.D. in 2000 from UCD, originally moving to the United States to work under Thomas Starzl, the father of transplant surgery, and John Fung, at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in the areas of immunology, hepatobiliary disease and transplantation, as he planned to become a liver transplant surgeon.

Delaney joined the Cleveland Clinic in 1999 on a one-year surgical fellowship to train with Victor Fazio. He was appointed an attending staff member in 2000, where he was a member of the departments of Colorectal Surgery and Minimally Invasive Surgery until 2005 when he was recruited to serve as chief of the Division of Colorectal Surgery and vice-chairman of the Department of Surgery at University Hospitals Case Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University, where he was Professor of Surgery for 10 years. In 2014, he was appointed as interim chair of the Department of Surgery at University Hospitals Case Medical Center and interim surgeon-in-chief of the University Hospitals Health System, while maintaining his role as chief of the division of colorectal surgery and surgical director of the UH Digestive Health Institute.

In 2015, Delaney was recruited to be the Chairman of the Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute (DDSI) at the Cleveland Clinic and has held the Victor W. Fazio MD Endowed Chair in Colorectal Surgery since 2016. As the chairman of the Clinic's Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute, Delaney oversees 800 employees, including more than 185 staff physicians working at the institute and manages the following clinical areas across all Cleveland Clinic locations globally: acute care/trauma surgery, bariatric surgery, breast surgery, colorectal surgery, gastroenterology, general surgery, hepatology, hepato-pancreato-biliary surgery, nutrition, pediatric surgery, and transplant surgery. In 2019, the Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute was ranked #2 nationally by U.S. News & World Report for gastroenterology and GI surgery.

Delaney was listed as a possible successor to Dr. Toby Cosgrove as the CEO of the Cleveland Clinic while the Chairman of the Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute in 2017.

Delaney has published more than 350 manuscripts, seven books, and 11 book chapters in scientific journals related to surgical education, colon and rectal cancer surgery, minimally invasive laparoscopic colorectal surgery, re-operative abdominal surgery, peri-operative care for intestinal surgery, and inflammatory bowel disease and diverticulitis. As of June 2019, Delaney has been cited 17,012 times and has a h-index of 72. He has been on the editorial board for 14 journals, including Diseases of the Colon & Rectum, World Journal of Surgery, The American Journal of Surgery, Techniques in Coloproctology, and Polish Journal of Surgery, and has acted as an invited reviewer for every major surgical journal. Delaney has delivered over 300 invited lectures internationally.

Clinical research

Delaney's clinical contributions include work in minimally invasive laparoscopic colorectal surgery to enhance recovery, of which he has demonstrated associated short and long-term cost-savings. His other work includes patient quality of life, surgical education, procedures for carcinomas of the colon and rectum, sphincter-saving surgery, re-operative abdominal surgery, Crohn's disease and Ulcerative colitis, and colonoscopy.

Delaney has developed various enhanced recovery pathways after surgery since an initial publication by his team on "Fast-track" surgery in 2001, which when combined with less-invasive surgery, have cut hospital stays for colorectal resection to two and a half days on average.

Cost-efficiency research

Delaney has had a major focus on work relating to cost-efficiency and value in healthcare, as well as surgical quality, which led to his invention of an affordable quality metric called the HARM Score.

HARM Score

Delaney developed the HARM Score, standing for (H)ospit(A)l stay, (R)eadmission, and (M)ortality, to accurately measure patient outcomes and quality of care inexpensively, as an alternative for hospitals not participating in the foremost National Surgical Quality improvement Program (NSQIP) because of expense and complexity. Using routinely captured data, the HARM Score decreased administrative costs associated with quality care improvement programs, while being almost universally applicable regardless of the size of the hospital. The HARM score has since been assessed and validated by others on bariatric patients, prompting the creation of the BAR-HARM score.

Patents

Delaney holds five patents for medical devices, techniques, and processes.

• US patent 20080262511A1, Delaney, Conor P., "Anoscope for Inspection and/or Surgery", published 2008-10-23, issued 2012-01-17 
• US application 20130339060A1, Delaney, Conor P. & Jonah Stulberg, "Method and system for extraction and analysis of inpatient and outpatient encounters from one or more healthcare related information systems", published 2013-12-19 
• US patent 9039224B2, Delaney, Conor P.; Nicholas J.G. Swingle & Kaleigh E. Judson et al., "Head-mounted pointing device", published 2014-04-03, issued 2015-05-26 
• US application 20160092641A1, Delaney, Conor P. & James Evans, "Facilitating clinically informed financial decisions that improve healthcare performance", published 2016-03-31 
• US application 20170165420A1, Rose, Johnie & Conor P. Delaney, "Subcutaneous hydration system, method, and device", published 2017-06-15 

Socrates Analytics, Inc.

In 2012, Delaney founded a software company called Socrates Analytics, Inc. to help hospitals and physicians collect and analyze hospital billing, administrative and operating room data. Socrates automated the collection of information stored across a number of data systems to allow hospitals to capture entire episodes of patient care, integrating disparate hospital administrative software systems to facilitate reporting on operational metrics. He created the venture while Chief of the Division of Colorectal Surgery at UH Case Medical Center, seeking to find what factors truly drove cost in the operating room and were associated with readmissions within 30 days of discharge. Delaney was quoted saying, "Socrates gives hospitals the opportunity to interpret complex administrative data and view trends, outliers and variability in the process, so they can improve their efficiency and terms of care." Delaney recruited a former McKesson executive, Jim Evans, to be the company's Chief Executive Officer. Socrates attracted over $1.5 million in capital and established several national distribution partnerships.

In 2001, Delaney was chosen to deliver the 24th Millin Lecture and awarded the prestigious Millin Medal by Royal College of Surgeons Ireland, named in honor of Terence Millin, the late Irish surgeon.

Delaney was recognized as the Jeffrey L. Ponsky MD Endowed Professor of Surgical Education at Case Western Reserve University in 2009, the inaugural Murdough Master Clinician in Colorectal Surgery in 2011, and the Victor W. Fazio MD Endowed Chair in Colorectal Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in 2016.

Delaney is past President of the International Society of Laparoscopic Colorectal Surgery and the Midwest Surgical Association. He has also been the Treasurer of the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons and has previously received awards from the Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland, as well as from colorectal societies in Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil, and across North America.

In September 2018, Delaney was invited to deliver the keynote address at the 43rd Sir Peter Freyer Memorial Lecture and Surgical Symposium in Galway, Ireland.

In December 2018, Delaney was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He was the second person to be awarded an Honorary Fellowship, the highest distinction the College has to offer, who had already received a Fellowship from the Royal College, for his work as a “leading international figure in the field of coloproctology.”

Delaney is highlighted in the EPIC Museum of Irish Emigration in Dublin, Ireland, having "emigrated from Ireland and found success as a physician abroad."

Delaney is married to Clare Delaney and has two children, Michelle and Peter.

His father, Dr. Peter V. Delaney, was a colorectal surgeon, fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and founder of an annual fixture on the Irish surgical calendar, the Sylvester O’Halloran Perioperative Symposium and meeting. In the acknowledgement for his book, Delaney credits his father, Peter, "whose love of surgery and its ability to help others led [Conor] to this field."

Delaney's maternal great-grandfather was Edward Peter O'Kelly, who served two terms as a Member of the British House of Commons.

• Victor W. Fazio, James M. Church, Conor P. Delaney (2005) Current Therapy in Colon and Rectal Surgery. Elsevier Mosby. 2nd edition. ISBN 1556644809
• Conor P. Delaney, Paul C. Neary, Alexander G. Heriot, Anthony J. Senagore (2006) Operative Techniques in Laparoscopic Colorectal Surgery. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. ISBN 9788586703737
• Conor P. Delaney, Paul C. Neary, Alexander G. Heriot, Anthony J. Senagore (2009) Tecnicas Operatorias Em Cirurgia Colorretal Laparoscopica. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. ISBN 9788586703737
• Conor P Delaney (2013) Netter's Surgical Anatomy and Approaches. Elsevier Health Sciences. ISBN 9781437708332
• Wai Lun Law, Conor P. Delaney (2013) Single Incision Laparoscopic and Transanal Colorectal Surgery. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 1461489024
• Conor P. Delaney, Justin K. Lawrence, Bradley J. Champagne, Deborah S. Keller (2013) Operative Techniques in Laparoscopic Colorectal Surgery. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. 2nd edition. ISBN 1451142781
• Liane S. Feldman, Conor P. Delaney, Olle Ljungqvist, Francesco Carli (2015) The SAGES / ERAS® Society Manual of Enhanced Recovery Programs for Gastrointestinal Surgery. Springer. ISBN 3319203649
• Hitendra R. H. Patel, Tim Mould, Jean V. Joseph, Conor P. Delaney (2015) Pelvic Cancer Surgery. Springer. ISBN 9781447142577
• Conor P Delaney (2015) Anatomia Y Abordajes Quirurgicos de Netter. Elsevier. ISBN 9789588871479
• Victor W. Fazio, James M. Church, Conor P. Delaney, Ravi P Kiran (2016) Current Therapy in Colon and Rectal Surgery. Elsevier Health Sciences. 3rd edition. ISBN 9780323280921
• Conor P Delaney (2016) Netter Anatomia E Abordagens Cirurgicas. Elsevier. ISBN 9788535284102
• Scott R. Steele, James M. Church, Conor P. Delaney, Tracy L. Hull, Matthew F. Kalady (2019) Illustrated Tips in Colon and Rectal Surgery. Wolters Kluwer. ISBN 9781975108250