Dr. Herschel Lessin
Dr. Lessin has been a practicing pediatric clinician for the past 39 years at The Children’s Medical Group. In 1997, he was a founding partner of one of the first private practice “supergroups” by merging two competing pediatric practices into one and expanding it to 25 clinicians, with eight offices in three counties in New York state’s Mid-Hudson Valley. The group provides pediatric care to more than 30,000 children and has a nearly 90-year history, across its various incarnations, providing such care.
Dr. Lessin received his medical degree from Stanford (Calif.) University and trained in pediatrics at Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Medical Center. He has been active in national policy and leadership in the American Academy of Pediatrics, having served on the executive committee of the Section of Administration and Practice Management, the national Committee on Practice and Ambulatory Medicine, and his current appointment to the national Private Payer Advocacy Advisory Committee. In those roles he has authored several national policy statements and clinical guidelines, including “Increasing Immunization Coverage,” “Immunizing Parents and Other Close Family Contacts in the Pediatric Office Setting,” “Instrument-Based Pediatric Vision Screening Policy Statement,” and most recently, “Clinical Practice Guideline for the Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Treatment of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Adolescents.” He is also the coeditor of the AAP’s ADHD toolkit for clinicians published in 2019. Dr. Lessin served as the director of clinical research for his group for 5 years and the medical director for the practice for 10 years.
He has served as a faculty member at numerous local and regional pediatric meetings. He has been a faculty member at the AAP’s annual national conference and exposition for the past decade, speaking on a variety of topics. Dr. Lessin also has been an invited speaker internationally at pediatric conferences in India and Egypt. He has participated in more than a dozen medical missions to developing countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Vietnam. His expertise includes practice management, the business of medicine, immunizations, ADHD, and liability topics. He has been a testifying expert witness for both defense and plaintiff in medical malpractice litigation for more than 30 years. He founded and served as president of a medical independent practice association that began with 12 physicians and grew to over 3,000 doctors. He is also a certified managed care executive. His most recent interest has been becoming a professional voice-over actor!
While performing all of the above, Dr. Lessin is a dedicated community pediatrician whose first love and primary goal has remained providing the highest quality medical care to children while helping his colleagues manage their businesses in order to be able to survive and continue to provide such care.