Impact Study Finds Nashville Health Care Sector Keeps Growing But Lags In Biotech

Nashville’s health care industry keeps expanding, but it’s being outpaced by many peer cities.

The latest economic impact study from the Nashville Health Care Council puts the value of the sector at nearly $67 billion. That’s a growth of 72% since the last impact study five years ago.

But according to the report produced by the Middle Tennessee State University Business and Economic Research Center, employment in health care in Nashville has grown by just 7.6% since 2013. Atlanta, Columbus, Denver, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Louisville and Raleigh all had more growth. Kansas City has doubled its health care workforce in the period.

More: Health Care Industry Nashville MSA 2019 Report

The Nashville Health Care Council is a financial supporter of health care coverage on WPLN News.

The Nashville region continues to lead the nation in health services, which includes hospitals and physician staffing companies. But MTSU economist Murat Arik says Nashville still hasn’t branched out much.

“In health care services we are doing fine, in all other health care areas we are either average or below average,” he says.
“We really need to boost up some of those sub-sectors to be actually a dominant force.”

Raleigh, Atlanta and Dallas do much more business in medical devices in biotech. And Denver has had 10 times the amount of venture capital investment in health care companies in recent years.

Nashville’s health care sector lost an estimated 14,000 jobs at the start of the pandemic. The impact report suggests the bounce back has been quicker than the rest of the region’s economy, with 5,300 jobs recovered by June 2020.