To define William Bruning, president & CEO of Mid-America Coalition on Health Care, one might think of an open hand. For years Bruning has had his hand out to offer support, strength and assistance in both his professional and personal life.

If the name sounds familiar, it should. Bruning has served on many Kansas City-area boards, including the Board of Advisers of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Missouri Arts Council and the Historic Kansas City Foundation. Currently, he chairs the Kansas City Landmarks Commission and is president of the Truman Medical Center board, of which he has been a member for 20 years.

In the last year Bruning has enjoyed some exciting work with Mid-America. The coalition works to improve the health of employees and their families, as well as help develop strategies to contain business health-care costs. To do so, employees, physicians and health-care companies have been brought together to hash out their administrative-complexity problems. “We bring all the players to the table and ask what their overlapping problems and common interests are instead of coming in and saying what we think should be fixed. It’s purely a collaborative effort,” says Bruning.

The result last year was that the coalition helped to streamline the health systems’ information systems and health-care claim submissions. This year they are focusing on a three-year Community Initiative on Depression project that will work to identify the direct and indirect costs of depression and create a structure to identify and treat it in both the workplace and the community.

Bruning is looking forward to how this project will affect the Kansas City business environment. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher introduced the program to employers at the coalition’s annual meeting Sept. 19, noting that no employer has ever tackled something so huge on a community-wide scale.

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