Dr. Matthew Finnegan has made considerable contributions to the art and science of wound healing over the last 24 years. After finishing his residency at Graduate Hospital, which included extensive training at what was the first wound healing center in the city of Philadelphia; he became volunteer faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, Presbyterian Campus. While at Penn-Presbyterian, Dr. Finnegan helped develop a wound healing program that incorporated an aggressive wound healing approach, utilizing nurse practitioners in long- term care settings.
This physician-directed wound care model has come to be the standard of care. The model has helped to regionalize the care to improve outcomes. Dr. Finnegan is the surgical consultant at Magee Rehabilitation Center in Philadelphia, and has expanded the program to include the most complex wounds in patients with spinal cord injury. The benefits of this program have been presented at national and international venues as a model of clinical excellence. After being recruited to Cooper University Hospital in 2001 to develop and direct the Institute for Wound Healing and Limb Preservation, Dr. Finnegan built the Cooper-Magee program into one of the region's centers of excellence in wound healing.
In 2008, Dr. Finnegan was recruited to build a division of General Surgery and Wound healing at Our Lady of Lourdes Health System, where he helped design and develop The Advanced Center for Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Medicine. He has taken a leading role in teaching surgeons about the role of biologic applications in wound healing and abdominal wall reconstruction and has been recognized multiple times as a “Top Doc” in South Jersey.
Dr. Finnegan has been involved in pioneering work in abdominal wall reconstruction, leading to a study called “Retrospective Study of the Outcome of Porcine Collagen in Abdominal Wall Defects”. This research was presented at the International Hernia Congress in March 2012.
His current clinical activities encompass performing complex re-operative general surgical procedures, which combine his skills in surgical oncology, colorectal surgery, wound healing, abdominal wall reconstruction, and surgical infectious disease. He is very involved with teaching surgical residents as a Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery with Rowan University School of Medicine, and he serves as Chief of General Surgery at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center. In addition, he is the Medical Director of Lourdes Medical Associates Surgical Specialists, which is the faculty group at Lourdes. Dr. Finnegan’s current resident research endeavors include: a submitted research paper on the diagnosis and treatment of osteomyelitis in complex wounds, and a review of my career long effort to improve outcomes in myocutaneous flaps for decubitus ulcers.