Iowa Health System announced yesterday that it has completed its planned addition of Methodist Health Services Corp. (MHSC) in Peoria, Ill., as its eighth senior affiliate.

MHSC operates Methodist Medical Center of Illinois, a 329-bed tertiary care hospital in Peoria, plus a school of nursing and 37 clinical sites in Illinois.

With the affiliation, Des Moines-based Iowa Health System is now the fifth-largest non-denominational health system in the United States, officials said in a press release. Iowa Health plans to invest $175 million into “strategic projects identified and initiated by Methodist” to expand MHSC’s services with new technology.