Larry Boress

President & CEO
Midwest Business Group on Health

Larry Boress is President & CEO of the Midwest Business Group on Health, one of the nation’s leading non-profit business coalitions. Founded in 1980, the Chicago-based MBGH is composed of over 90 major, self-funded, public and private employers having headquarters or employee populations in the Chicago metropolitan area. Membes include Abbott Labs, Boeing, City of Chicago, and Kraft Foods. MBGH member firms provide health benefits to over 2 million lives, spending close to $2.5 billion on health benefits annually. MBGH's primary mission is to promote leadership, collaboration and knowledge among employers to continuously improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of health care and the health status of their constituents.

 

Mr. Boress oversees all of MBGH’s educational, networking, group purchasing, research and advocacy activities. He assists member companies in formulating benefit designs, measuring the performance of providers and health plans, and sharing of benefit management strategies.   

Presently, he leads MBGH’s research activities on health benefit strategies, onsite clinics and incentive programs, serves as an HHS “Community Leader on Value-Driven Health,” acts as the Coordinator of the Leapfrog Group’s patient safety and quality initiatives in Illinois, and oversees the “Taking Control of Your Health” project, a value-based benefit design activity, combining the incentive of waived co-pays with the use of specially-trained pharmacists counselors to improve the health, while reducing the cost of diabetes patients.  

In his formal training, he received a Masters in Public Administration from Roosevelt University and a Bachelors of Arts degree from Northern Illinois University. Larry also is a Certified Association Executive.  He formerly served as Executive Director of the Chicago Business Group on Health. 

Prior to joining MBGH in 1991, he spent 17 years at the Illinois State Medical Society.  During that time, he assisted physicians in their practices and represented the medical profession in its relationships with hospitals, regulatory agencies and affiliated professional organizations.  

Larry currently serves as co-chair of the Illinois Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease; as a member of the Joint Commission’s Roundtable on Reducing Waste in Health Care; as a member of the AMA’s Oversight Body of the Ethical Force Program and on the Coalition for Qality and Patient Safety in Chicago. He has been a member of the NCQA Purchasers Advisory Council and has represented employers on various governmental, business and health care board. He directed a Commonwealth Fund project to improve online physician directories and co-authored MBGH’s report on the public’s need for physician performance information, “How We Choose Doctors: What Is and What Could Be.”