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Health care leaders featured at Eggs and Issues event
EAST PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — More than 160 people gathered for the East Peoria Chamber of Commerce Eggs and Issues series on health care Friday morning at the Par-A-Dice Hotel Casino.
Health care is the region's single largest jobs sector, employing more than 31,100 people in 715 facilities in 2023, according to the Greater Peoria Economic Development Council and JobsEQ. Those are the latest regional statistics broken down by sector.
The featured speakers at the Eggs and Issues included Dr. Meenakshy Aiyer, the regional dean at University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria (UICOMP); OSF Healthcare President Michelle Conger and Carle Health Greater Peoria Regional President Dr. Keith Knepp.
Medical professional recruitment, retention, research and creative revenue solutions in the changing funding landscape were some the topics each health care system leader detailed.
Aiyer said UICOMP is one of the largest medical schools in the country, with about 660 students, residents and fellows at any one time. That means it functions as the pipeline for the region's next health care providers. Conger and Knepp spoke to the many ways the medical care continuum is advancing.
The topic for this event in the Eggs and Issues series covered one of a trio of economic drivers in Greater Peoria.
Those drivers include healthcare broadly, business and industry, ag and agribusiness. Those areas are in no particular order, as some economists suggest these sectors of the regional economy are too interdependent to be ranked.
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