Message from the Leadership

Lawrence M. Rhein, MD Associate Professor of Pediatrics Chair, Department of Pediatrics Physician-In-Chief UMass Memorial Children’s Medical Center Division Chief, Pediatric Neontaology Director, Center for Healthy Infant Lung Development

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the website of the Department of Pediatrics, University of Massachusetts Medical School and UMass Memorial Children’s Medical Center (CMC).  The CMC is the only tertiary care health care facility for infants, children, and adolescents in Central New England.

Since 2005, we have been members of the Children's Hospital Association, formerly NACHRI (National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions) as a "hospital within a hospital". In Central New England, we have the only Level I accredited Trauma Center for Children, the only Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for the region, and the only Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). We have more than 110 medical and surgical specialists and subspecialists skilled and trained in the care of children and more than 500 support staff in the disciplines of nursing, social work, psychology, nutrition, and child life, to name a few. In the past year, the Children's Medical Center admitted over 4,000 children to the inpatient and critical care units, cared for more than 30,000 children in the Pediatric Emergency Department, and recorded over 55,000 patient visits in the Ambulatory Service.

All the physicians in the CMC are faculty members in the University of Massachusetts Medical School where they teach medical students, interns and residents, and other ancillary students and they conduct research in many topics related to child health such as HIV, leukemia, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, teen pregnancy, infant mortality, and health care delivery in the community.  The University of Massachusetts Medical School was one of 40 centers for the National Children's Study (NCS), a federally funded longitudinal study to investigate the effects of the environment on the growth and development and health of children by following 100,000 children from pre-birth to age 21 years.  

In the CMC, we consider every child in Central New England to be “our” child and we feel responsible for each child’s health care, either directly or indirectly. We work closely with all the primary care physicians in the area who care for children. We know that medical care for children has changed dramatically in recent years: many children with complex conditions such as cancer, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and other chronic illnesses can now be cared for as outpatients rather than having to be admitted to the hospital. We utilize multi-disciplinary teams for many of these diagnoses and we make a special effort to insure that we provide family-centered care for all of our patients.

We hope that you will use this website to learn more about our services and our faculty and staff. We consider it a privilege to care for your children as if they were our own.

Lawrence Rhein, M.D.