M. Patricia Rivera, MD, FCCP, is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary Diseases and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center. She joined the faculty at URMC in April 2022 as the C. Jane Davis & C. Robert Davis Distinguished Professor in Pulmonary Medicine and the Chief of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Division. Her expertise includes screening, diagnosing, and staging lung cancer and managing treatment complications.

Dr. Rivera is recognized as a pulmonologist with expertise in lung cancer and as a pioneer in the development of multidisciplinary lung cancer programs. She was instrumental in the development of the Multidisciplinary Thoracic Oncology Program (MTOP) at UNC, a program she co-directed for 23 years. She also developed and served as the director of the Multidisciplinary Lung Cancer Screening Program at UNC. Dr. Rivera served as the chair of the American Thoracic Society from 2023-2024.

Dr. Rivera is committed to improving the care of the lung cancer patient and is dedicated to promoting state of the art, evidence-based care. Her research interests have focused on early detection of pre-invasive bronchial lesions, toxicities caused by therapies in lung cancer, lung cancer in women and more recently, lung cancer screening. Dr. Rivera has been an active participant in the ACCP Lung Cancer Guidelines Initiative and had an integral part in the guidelines development and implementation. Her expertise in lung cancer, clinical expertise in diagnostic procedures and interest in early detection catapulted her interest in developing a multidisciplinary lung cancer screening program at UNC. Dr. Rivera has been part of the UNC lung cancer screening initiative in the development of a lung cancer screening registry and as a co-investigator in quality improvement of lung cancer screening implementation.

Dr. Rivera is committed to promoting multidisciplinary programs to enhance the overall care of lung cancer patients, including behavioral, psychological, and quality-of-life components of their care.