John Morton, MD MPH MHA

Dr. John Morton is Professor in the Department of Surgery at the Yale School of Medicine, Vice-Chair for Quality, Division Chief for Bariatric and Minimally Invasive Surgery, Fellowship Director for Bariatric and Minimally Invasive Surgery and the System Lead for Surgical Quality and Bariatric Services in the Yale New Haven Health System of 6 hospitals. He served as Chief of Bariatric and Minimally Invasive Surgery, Clinic Chief for the Bariatric and Metabolic Inter-Disciplinary Clinic and Director of Bariatric and Minimally Invasive Surgery Fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine from 2003-2019. Dr. Morton was raised in Montgomery, Alabama and El Salvador, his mother’s home country. Dr. Morton received undergraduate, Masters in Public Health, and Medical Doctor Degrees from Tulane University and a Masters in Health Administration from University of Washington. He was the first surgical resident to receive a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Fellowship in the program’s history at University of Washington and completed an advanced laparoscopic surgery fellowship at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He served on Capitol Hill as Senator Bill Frist’s Health Policy Intern. He is a Diplomate of both the American Board of Surgery and American Board of Obesity Medicine, Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and American Gastroenterological Association and was certified in Medical Quality by the American College of Medical Quality. He has published 209 articles with an H-Index of 56 and presented over 300 times both nationally and internationally. His research on quality improvement and bariatric surgery has greatly contributed to the literature including influential articles on patient safety, medical education, diabetes and bariatric surgery, fertility and birth outcomes following weight loss surgery, microbiome, pre-operative weight loss, family effects of weight loss surgery, adolescent bariatric surgery, effect of surgical weight loss on testosterone, obesity disparities in health care, changes in cancer screening tests following weight loss, endoscopic procedures for weight loss, and impact of bariatric surgery upon telomeres, alcohol metabolism and cardiac risk factors. He led 5 site FDA Pivotal Trials and has received funding from National Institutes of Health and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. He has authored 24 book chapters and served as editor of five books: Quality in Obesity Treatment, Morbid Obesity: Perioperative Management, The ASMBS Textbook of Bariatric Surgery, 1st and 2nd editions and SAGES Handbook on Quality, Patient Safety and Outcomes. Furthermore, he has served as Clinical Editor for Bariatric Times (12,000 readership) and for 11 editorial boards including Obesity Surgery, Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, and World Journal of Gastroenterology. His research efforts have been recognized by 28 research awards from 5 different surgical societies. As a teacher, Dr. Morton has received 5 teaching awards at Stanford in 8 years including the 2008 Arthur Bloomfield Clinical Teacher of the Year and 2011 Henry J. Kaiser Teaching Award. Dr. Morton also was featured in the Emmy ® award-winning Telemundo program Tu Familia, Tu Salud regarding bariatric surgery. Dr. Morton has the unique distinction of having served as Surgical Quality Director for two Top 20 US News & World Report Honor Roll Hospitals. He is the system lead for surgical quality in the Yale New Haven Hospital System which annually includes over 2500 beds, 86,000 surgeries, and 130,00 in-patient admissions. At Yale, he created a Surgical Quality Council from all Divisions, a Surgical Dashboard, Surgical Residency Quality Curriculum, Combined Anesthesia/Surgery Grand Rounds on Great Saves, Enhanced and Virtual Morbidity and Mortality Conference, Surgeon On-Boarding, and a System-Wide Transabdominal Surgical Site Infection Reduction Program that significantly reduced SSI by 50%. He serves as the Chair of Surgery Signature of Care Initiatives that seek to develop and implement a shared care signature vision for the entire continuum of care from inpatient to ambulatory to physician office settings throughout the entire Yale New Haven Health System to leverage solutions to coordinate access to ensure improved patient experience and outcomes as well as alignment and efficient use of resources. At Stanford, Dr. Morton led efforts to improve the Department of Surgery’s University Health Consortium’s annual ranking from 24/98 to 1/98 and their Annual NSQIP mortality ranking from Average to Exemplary. He has been an invited speaker on surgical quality by the American College of Surgeons, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, National Patient Safety Foundation, and American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery and served on the National Quality Forum’s Surgical and GI/GU Steering Committees. He is the inaugural national Chair of the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program (MBSAQIP), a collaboration for over 900 hospitals between the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery and the American College of Surgeons. He has overseen 3 national standards, establishment of the clinical registry, Public Use File, Risk-Benefit Calculator and 3 national quality improvement projects within MBSAQIP. From 2014-18, the Stanford Bariatric Surgery program was noted to be Exemplary in five different categories by MBSAQIP. At Yale, he expanded bariatric services to 4 hospitals and decreased bariatric surgery complications by 62% converting Needs Improvement designation to Exemplary Outcomes. From 2014-5, he served as elected President of the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) composed of over 4000 members from 52 countries. In 2017, he received the highest honor accorded to a bariatric surgeon with the ASMBS Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement and in 2019 received the Walter Pories Award. With over 6000 bariatric surgeries performed, he has been recognized as a bariatric surgery leader by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, RAND, American College of Surgeons, Who’s Who and America’s Top Surgeons. His clinical skills have been recognized as being named Castle Connolly’s Physician of the Year for Clinical Excellence in 2012. He is one of the few bariatric surgeons to also practice obesity medicine and perform endoscopic bariatric procedures. Dr. Morton also founded the first obesity related Political Action Committee, Obesity PAC on behalf of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery and Chair of the National Obesity Collaborative Care Summit for 35 Different Medical Societies. He was selected as Co-Chair and Chair for Obesity Week 2017 and 2018, which was the largest worldwide meeting devoted to obesity with over 5000 attendees annually. He was elected as President of the California Chapter of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) and served as the National Chairman for Access to Care and Data Dissemination for ASMBS and Member of the Committees on Public Education, Emerging Technologies, and Research. He has been an invited speaker by the American College of Surgeons, American Society of Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery, The Obesity Society, Digestive Diseases Week and Society of Advanced Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgery as well as at Cleveland Clinic, Vanderbilt, UCLA, Cedars Sinai, and Harvard and internationally in the United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Peru, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Mexico, Australia, Portugal, Germany, China, Taiwan, and France. Dr. Morton has been featured on the Today Show, Good Morning America, NY Times, National Public Radio, Sirius XM Doctor Radio, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, BBC, Newsweek, Time, Medscape, Washington Post, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, International Herald Tribune, Reuters, United Press International, Wall Street Journal, and Associated Press. John.Morton@Yale.edu; jmortonmd@gmail.com; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJaFJCZRtb4