President & CEO, Nemours Children’s Health System

R. Lawrence Moss, MD, FACS, FAAP is president and CEO of The Nemours Foundation. Nemours is an integrated Children’s Health System with two free-standing hospitals in Delaware and Florida serving children from across the United States and internationally. Nemours is one of the largest integrated children’s health systems in the country, with two freestanding state-of-the-art children’s hospitals — Nemours Children’s Hospital, Delaware, and Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando.

With more than 1.7 million patient encounters annually, Nemours provides medical care in five states with more than 80 primary- urgent- and specialty care practices serving children in Delaware, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Georgia. More than 40 hospitalists serve 19 affiliated hospitals, helping keep the best possible care for children local, and Nemours CareConnect provides parents peace of mind 24/7 with telehealth services delivered by board-certified pediatricians.

Dr. Moss is a renowned pediatric surgeon, biomedical researcher, educator and health system executive. He is internationally recognized for leadership in healthcare quality and safety, including service as a founding director for developing quality standards for pediatric surgery nationally. He is known for tremendous achievements in academic health centers, national hospital associations, and government organizations accountable to the public. He is also an accomplished research scientist with a track record of federal funding, high-impact peer-reviewed publications, and creating and leading successful research centers of excellence.

He joined Nemours after serving seven years as Surgeon-in-Chief at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and the E. Thomas Boles Jr., Professor of Surgery at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. Previously he served as Surgeon-in-Chief and the Robert Pritzker Professor of Surgery at Yale University and as a faculty member at Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital. He is the author of over 150 publications and led an NIH funded research program for 15 years.

A pediatric surgeon for more than 26 years, Dr. Moss has a longstanding interest in clinical trials, assessment of surgical outcomes and quality improvement. He is also known for his interest in necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) and other life-threatening problems in infants. He led the first-ever clinical trial in neonatal surgery and led a multicenter consortium investigating biologic predictors of outcomes and novel therapies for NEC.

Dr. Moss obtained his BA in English Literature at Stanford University and his MD at the University of California, San Diego, and completed his General Surgery Residency at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle. He then moved to Chicago and completed Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation/Critical Care and Pediatric Surgery fellowships at Northwestern University. Dr. Moss holds numerous leadership positions in healthcare and surgical societies nationally and is a founding member of both the American College of Surgeons Pediatric National Surgical Quality Improvement and Children’s Surgery Verification Programs. He has served as the Director of Quality Improvement programs in both pediatric and adult academic medical centers and has held leadership and advisory roles in health quality for the National Quality Forum, American Academy of Pediatrics, FDA, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr. Moss has been listed in Best Doctors in the United States continually since 2004.

Dr. Moss also serves the interests of children through volunteer service to Handshake America and serves on the Boards of Children’s Chance and Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund, Inc.