R. Lawrence Moss, MD

President and Chief Executive Officer

Nemours Children’s Health

Bio

R. Lawrence Moss, MD, FACS, FAAP is president and CEO of Nemours Children's Health, an integrated pediatric health system serving children from across the United States and around the world. It is one of the largest children’s health systems in the country, with two freestanding state-of-the-art children’s hospitals — Nemours Children’s Hospital, Delaware in Wilmington, Del., and Nemours Children’s Hospital, Florida in Orlando. With more than 1.7 million patient encounters annually, Nemours provides medical care in four states through nearly 72 primary, urgent, and specialty care practices serving children in Delaware, Florida, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Dr. Moss is a highly accomplished academic pediatric surgeon and biomedical researcher of more than 25 years. He is the author of more than 150 publications and led an NIH-funded research program for 15 years.  

He has worked to combat the declining quality and rising cost of healthcare in the United States, which is estimated at $4.1 trillion in 2020, or 19.7 percent of GDP. He believes that America's healthcare system defines health much too narrowly by focusing primarily on medical treatments, misguidedly incentivizing the complexity and volume of medical services instead of health outcomes. Dr. Moss is focusing this phase of his career on transforming the definition of health in children to include all aspects of a child’s life – and on fundamentally changing the financial incentives in children's care to a “pay-for-health” model.  

Dr. Moss’s vision – to create the healthiest generations of children – requires that the current fee-for-service system change to a holistic approach to children’s care by tackling the social factors that predominantly create long-term health. This fundamental shift from reactive care to proactive wellness is the cornerstone of the Nemours Children’s approach to go “well beyond medicine.”  

In a recent example of Nemours Children’s well beyond medicine approach, Dr. Moss and Nemours hosted U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra at the Nemours Estate for a forum on improving children’s mental health. Secretary Becerra and state and local leaders participated in forum roundtables that addressed mental and behavioral health challenges, pediatric healthcare workforce shortages, school wellness, and innovative policy solutions.  

Dr. Moss continues to lead and expand the organization’s teams that work with government and commercial payers on innovative models that reimburse for prevention, social determinants of health, and care coordination.  

In 2021, his third year as President and CEO – despite the continuing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic – Dr. Moss led the introduction of a bold five-year strategic plan that reimagines Nemours Children’s role and the role of all children’s hospitals and providers in children's health. A simultaneous organization-wide rebranding has helped bring the plan to life and position Nemours Children’s as the preeminent voice for children’s health. With the conviction that there can be no health without health equity, in early 2022 he helped secure $25 million from Alan H. Ginsburg and the Ginsburg Family Foundation to create the Ginsburg Institute for Health Equity at Nemours Children's Health. This first-of-its-kind initiative will advance health equity for children in medically underserved communities by building a world-class interdisciplinary program that goes beyond medicine to study and implement the types of interventions that will profoundly and sustainably improve the lives of children and the next generation of adults.  

Dr. Moss obtained his BA at Stanford University and his MD at the University of California, San Diego. He also completed fellowships at Northwestern University. He holds numerous leadership positions in healthcare and surgical societies nationally and is a founding member of the American College of Surgeons’ programs for Pediatric National Surgical Quality Improvement and for Children’s Surgery Verification. He is also a member of the Children’s Hospital Association Board of Trustees and has held leadership and advisory roles in health quality for the National Quality Forum, American Academy of Pediatrics, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He has been named to Modern Healthcare’s 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives for the past two years (2022 and 2021). 

R. is Speaking At

Multi-stakeholder Efforts to Prioritize and Sustain Health Equity Initiatives that Prevent Health Risks and Significantly Improve Care

Tuesday, June 20

11:00 AM - 11:50 AM

FIRESIDE CHAT: HEALTHCARE TRANSFORMATION TO ADVANCE HEALTH EQUITY

Tuesday, June 20

9:55 AM - 10:20 AM