Health-Care Industry Pumps Billions Into Region's Economy
Nashville is widely known as Music City USA, but its burgeoning health-care industry is actually the region’s largest nongovernmental employer.
The city’s strong tradition of supporting private sector health-care ventures began more than 40 years ago with the creation of HCA Inc. in 1968. That company is now the world's largest private hospital and clinic operator, and it’s widely given credit for fueling the growth of health-care-related companies in Nashville.
“The Nashville story is legend among health-care entrepreneurs,” says James Lewis, CEO and managing partner of Cumberland Consulting Group, a local firm that specializes in helping companies use health-care technology.
Lewis decided to move his company from Chicago, Ill., to Nashville in 2004. His decision was based entirely on the area’s history and reputation for being health-care friendly.
“The appeal of Middle Tennessee was hard to resist,” Lewis says. “Our partners saw Nashville as the ideal corporate headquarters because the city embraces entrepreneurs and nurtures innovative, dynamic, fast-growing firms.”
Since HCA began, Nashville has become home to more than 300 health-care companies that account for $50 billion in annual revenue and more than 300,000 jobs globally, according to data from The Nashville Health Care Council, an affiliate of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce that fosters the growth of the local health-care community.
“No city has as much innovation and entrepreneurial energy in the health-care industry as Nashville,” says Caroline Young, president of the Nashville Health Care Council.
The city is also home to 250 professional service companies that specialize in health-care-related support services, including banks, accounting firms, law firms, and architecture and design firms.
