 What makes for excellence in heart care? It starts with one of the most amazing teams of heart surgeons and cardiologists that I've seen assembled under one roof and the region's leading technology in a new $40 million facility. This is the nationally recognized Heart and Vascular Institute of Eastern Kentucky at Pikeville Medical Center. On Tuesday, February 7th, the Southeast Kentucky Chamber of Commerce held a members meeting featuring president and CEO of Pikeville Medical Center, Donovan Blackburn. During his speech, Blackburn talked about the nursing shortage and new medical care programs, some of which are already being greenlit. There's a lot of attention being placed on healthcare across the nation right now. Between the workforce shortage, there's a financial crisis that's happening throughout especially in rural communities. So the intent today was just to try to give the members of the chamber and those that attended a little understanding of really what's happening. We're very fortunate in Kentucky because of the work that the governor has done and his cabinet to secure a program called HRIP, which is an advanced Medicare payment program while you improve your quality matrix. And that's really, it's not saved every hospital to the point where everybody's operating back in the black. But it has certainly made a huge difference in a way that hospital is able to be sustainable and to be able to progress and to continue to move forward. Blackburn is confident in saying the economic impact of PMC is greater than what most people realize. He also assures those in the medical field that career opportunities are plentiful in eastern Kentucky. We represent over $35 million in local spending. I imagine that that money wasn't invested back into your own community. We represent some of the best healthcare plans in the state and in the nation, for that matter. So that's families over 3,100 families that actually have healthcare because of us that allows a second person in the family to be able to go out and work and provide a secondary income. And I've heard it time after time that there's no opportunity in eastern Kentucky. Well, I'm here to tell you that's not true. I have between myself and ARH combined, we probably have close to a thousand jobs that are available. These are good paying jobs that puts not only food on the table, but allows somebody the opportunity to be able to serve their community, whether it's your family or your community. It's a sense of giving back, but a great career opportunity as well. Reporting for Mountaintop News, I'm Nick Column.