Dr. Robert Flannery, MD

After graduating from medical school in 2006, I spent two years in a General Surgery Residency before transferring to Family Medicine residency at Excela Health in Latrobe, PA. I pursued a fellowship in sports medicine at Rutgers University. During my fellowship training I was able to treat athletes from both Rutgers and Princeton Universities. I moved on to private practice in Birmingham, AL with Lemak Health, as the lead medical physician for Jacksonville State University. After three very valuable years in Birmingham, I was able to further my career by moving to Cleveland Ohio to join University Hospitals as a Primary Care Sports Medicine Physician the Department of Orthopedics and a clinical assistant professor at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in August of 2016. As part of the Drusinsky University Hospitals Sports Medicine Institute, I served as Assistant Medical Physician for the Cleveland Browns, Team Physician for Oberlin College and St. Ignatius High School, Director …of Community Outreach and Education, core faculty for the orthopedic and primary care sports medicine fellowships, and the fellowship musculoskeletal ultrasound director.

I joined the NFL Physician Society in 2017 and have presented and spoke at NFLPS sanctioned conferences. I have been involved in the Heart Smart Initiative and was part of the group that met with Ohio state senators to pass House Bill 47 that mandates that all high school athletic venues have emergency actions plans that are venue specific and rehearsed yearly, every venue has an AED, and all coaches have access to CPR and AED training. In addition to advocating at the state level, I have also gone to Washington DC with the American Heart Association to meeting with Congress members in both the House and Senate to advocate for similar bills to be passed on the national level.

I developed and started the AEDin3 Challenge in August 2022, which tests an athletic venue’s cardiac arrest emergency action plan. In May 2022 I joined the Joint Advisory Committee for Sports Medicine for the Ohio High School Athletic Association, making recommendations to the OHSAA through our semiannual year meetings.