Letter from the President 2024

To Members of the Kansas City Medical Society:

Greetings,

My name is Greg Unruh, and I am honored to be the President of the Society for 2024. By way of a short introduction, I practice anesthesiology at the University of Kansas Medical Center. I have been involved in and have held leadership positions in local, state, and national societies of organized medicine throughout the years, both in anesthesiology and non-anesthesiology societies. I was an officer in the Wy-Jo Medical Society when we merged with the Kansas City Medical Society and have remained on the Board throughout all of the reorganization. I am very proud of how far we have come, It has put us in position to speak for physicians on both sides of the state line. We have expanded our Leadership Council, and we have passionate members of our Board of Directors.

I want to commend our Immediate Past President, Dr. Carole Freiberger for her leadership in 2023. She provided us with an optimistic, can-do Presidency that advanced the Society and the practice of medicine in the KC area, so thank you Carole! In addition, we have welcomed the steady leadership of our executive director, Mr. Micah Flint. We appreciate him keeping us on track and organizing our many activities.

Several of the things I mention will be dealt with in more detail throughout this communication, but I wanted to highlight some the several areas the Board has chosen for our work this coming year:

• Advocacy
  We want to advocate on both sides of the state line working with both the Missouri State Medical and Kansas Medical Societies (MMSA and KMS) on behalf of physicians. On the Kansas side, the legislature is working on many issues that affect us including scope of practice, vaccinations, Medicaid reimbursement and Medicaid expansion. We are working with KMS to provide testimony and influence our legislative representatives.

• Support for our Foundation
  We want to support our crown jewel whole heartedly, the Kansas City Medical Society Foundation which continues to be a model for advocacy and education, as well as our charitable care program which provides immense benefits for our uninsured or under insured patients. The Foundation supported expansion of Medicaid on the Missouri side and is advocating tirelessly for expansion on the Kansas side. Ms. Karole Bradford is our Executive Director.

• Opioid abuse
  We have been working to help stem the tide of opioid abuse through education and visibility. We are in the process of putting together TikTok videos about the dangers of opioid abuse produced by local high school students and targeted at high school students at their level and their preferred communication platform. We also have activities targeted to school district officials and several of our Board members and members provide advice around opioid use disorder and school policies.

• Wellness and Suicide Prevention
  Our focus has been on removing the stigma that sometimes attaches to physicians help-seeking. We have been advocating for health systems and hospitals to remove credentialing language that could impede a physician from seeking help. Several systems are reviewing their language and are now trying to focus on current, not historical, mental health issues or substance use that could affect safe practice. We are also working to participate in Physician Suicide Awareness Day in September.

• Welcoming New Members
  If you are a current member, thank you! I hope you have found our activities to be meaningful for you and your practice. Please consider asking your colleagues to join our collective voices. If you are not a member, please consider joining-we’d love to have you!

In conclusion, I’m excited about the year to come and look forward to hearing any and all thoughts and ideas for the Society moving forward.

Thanks, and best regards,

Greg