Why Is Providing Digestive Disease Services in Abu Dhabi an Important Endeavor for Cleveland Clinic?

Q: Why is providing digestive disease services in Abu Dhabi an important endeavor for Cleveland Clinic?

A: Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi has been an incredibly important and exciting adventure for the Cleveland Clinic enterprise.

Having been in the healthcare marketplace there for almost 15 years, Cleveland Clinic partnered with Mubadala Healthcare to build the new Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi hospital, which opened in 2015. This is a full, multispecialty hospital, with our clinical institutes well-represented. Among the largest institutes at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi is our Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute team.

Dr. Matt Kroh, previously the Section Head of Surgical Endoscopy in the Department of General Surgery in Cleveland, was recently appointed as Chief of the Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute in Abu Dhabi. He went to Abu Dhabi at the beginning of this year, bringing a broad skill set including advanced clinical skills, national and international recognition, a great understanding of education and research, but perhaps most importantly, a wonderful style of leadership that will help us continue to develop and grow our team there.

Our Digestive Disease Institute in Abu Dhabi includes gastroenterologists, general surgeons and colorectal surgeons as well as nurses, nutritionists and wound and enterostomal therapists. We currently have 18 staff physicians (9 gastroenterologists, 9 surgical specialists), six associate staff and nearly 140 caregivers. The institute includes 36 inpatient beds, three dedicated operating rooms, four endoscopy rooms and 18 outpatient rooms.

The team’s excellence has led to a 30 percent increase in patient volumes over last year — and similar increases in endoscopy and operative cases. Already, the case mix is shifting to one of increasing difficulty and patients are being referred from around the region and internationally, as we seem to see at all of our facilities.

In close collaboration with their U.S. counterparts, Dr. Kroh and his team are also emphasizing our educational and research mission at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, including rotations of staff physicians, residents and medical students to Cleveland Clinic main campus. Regional educational courses are being set up in the Middle East, and I am personally excited to watch the growth of this hospital in the region as we increasingly focus on broadening its capabilities and developing clinical specialties such as liver, kidney and pancreas transplantation.

This is an exciting time for us at Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi is a fantastic opportunity for us to bring our model of patient care outside of the United States.

— Conor Delaney, MD, PhD
Chairman, Digestive Disease & Surgery Institute
Cleveland Clinic