19-02-2025
OSF Leaders meet with lawmaker to strengthen workforce
PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — Improving the healthcare workforce to save lives.
A meeting at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center's Jump Trading Simulation and Education Center was held to talk about what can be done to create more jobs in the medical field.
Leaders of OSF HealthCare, Peoria Mayor Rita Ali, central Illinois career and technical education leaders along with representatives from organized labor talked about the need for healthcare workers, or as OSF refers to their employees as 'mission partners', how federal dollars can be used for career and technical programs in Illinois and how to keep Illinois medical students in the state.
'There's a huge health care job shortage right now,' said Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who represents Illinois's 8th district which encompasses Chicago suburbs like Elgin, Hoffman Estates and Schaumburg. 'Just not enough people to take the vacancies that exist in health care throughout the country, including here in Peoria.'
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Krishnamoorthi, along with Pennsylvania Republican, G.T. Thompson, authored the bi-partisan Medicare Patient Access and Practice Stabilization Act, which was signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2018.
Now, he is going to places in Illinois to see what can be done to employ more healthcare workers in the state.
'What I've been doing is going and visiting different places like OSF and other employers to figure out, 'Okay, what do we need to do in the reauthorization of this law to make it better, provide more resources and make it even more valuable for both students and employers?'' he said.
Shelley Parn, Chief Human Resource Officer for OSF HealthCare, said the meeting was critically important to have someone at OSF who can vouch for Peoria, because, she said, it takes more than just the healthcare system.
'If you think about how some of the funding for our academic institutions such as ICC, Bradley, ISU, our state universities, how do we ensure that they have the right funding themselves to have the right programs that we partner with to bring them into that health care?' Parn said.
Parn emphasized how important education is to OSF and the state of Illinois, along with expressing the hope to figure out how to continue to saturate employment in Illinois' medical field.
'OSF HealthCare has invested millions of dollars in their workforce in just tuition. And so if you think about that from that perspective, how can they continue to help systems like ours support that type of approach moving forward?,' Parn said.
While no specific dollar amount was given, the hope is to receive support both financially and informationally at the federal level.
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