How Nashville became a magnet for health companies

Nashville will always be known as Music City, but it’s emerged as a gigantic hub for the healthcare industry.

Nashville is home to hundreds of healthcare companies, and Oracle is moving its world headquarters to Music City.

The city is hosting ViVE, a digital health conference that kicks off Sunday and runs through Wednesday. The location makes sense on many levels.

About 900 companies in the healthcare ecosystem are based in Nashville, according to the Nashville Health Care Council. About 500 of those companies touch patients, while 400 other firms provide services that support the healthcare industry.

HCA Healthcare, America’s largest for-profit hospital system, is based in Nashville. Community Health Systems and Ardent Health Services are based just outside the city.

Oracle Corp., which has said it’s all in on health care after acquiring Cerner in 2022, is moving its world headquarters to Nashville. Ash Shehata, KPMG’s U.S. sector leader for healthcare, says it’s no accident Oracle is moving to Nashville, which he calls “the center of healthcare innovation.”

Apryl Childs-Potter, president of the Nashville Health Care Council, tells Chief Healthcare Executive® that she’s excited for the return of ViVE.

“It’s sort of a testament not only to our city's ability to host conferences of that scale, but really our status as a healthcare hub and our growing sort of concentration of healthcare technology companies,” she says.

Nashville’s growth as a major center for healthcare companies has been no accident, Childs-Potter says. Over the past 30 years, the Nashville Health Care Council has worked with other business groups to attract healthcare companies.

“There's been a real intentional effort, from the business community's perspective, to foster the growth of healthcare companies,” she says.

Nashville’s identity is rightfully tied to country music, and she says the music industry contributes about $10 billion annually to the Tennessee economy. By contrast, the healthcare companies in the Nashville region pour $67 billion annually into the state’s economy, she says.

“We don't want to usurp the Music City moniker, but we really do think that health care is the big driver industry for the region,” Childs-Potter says.

(See part of our conversation with Apryl Childs-Potter in this video. The story continues below.)

‘The DNA of Nashville’

The council is working to continue to find ways to attract more health and health tech companies to Nashville. The council’s board includes Sam Hazen, CEO of HCA Healthcare, Lucinda M. Baier, president and CEO of Brookdale Senior Living, Tim Hingtgen, CEO of Community Health Systems, and other healthcare executives.

“We used to say that the purpose of the organization was to make Nashville known as a healthcare capital,” Childs-Potter explains. “I like to say that our new generation of leaders aren't satisfied with just being a healthcare capital. They want Nashville to be known as the healthcare city.”

At the same time, Nashville needs more talent, and more physicians, to draw more companies, and the region is taking steps on that front as well.

Last year, Belmont University opened Nashville’s third medical school, the Thomas F. Frist Jr. College of Medicine, joining Vanderbilt University’s medical school and Meharry Medical College.

“We’re just thinking about how we continue to make it an attractive market for those companies to continue to locate here and grow,” Childs-Potter says.

Nashville’s success in drawing more health companies to the city comes from people across the industry working together, she says.

“We say our secret sauce is this level of collaboration, and it's truly just built into the DNA of Nashville,” Childs-Potter says. “I think it comes from our history and music that this sort of idea of people come together from different backgrounds with different experiences, and they collaborate and they make something new. And that really is sort of the ethos of this business community.”

“We'd like to say, everybody's going to take a meeting with you the first time. You have to earn the second one,” she says. “But regardless of who it is in the community, people are really willing to reach back and help people with their business, to mentor, to be willing to take a meeting to hear about your business.”

Thinking bigger

Nashville is poised to become an even bigger magnet for healthcare companies. Childs-Potter says the city has most of the ingredients to become the healthcare destination.

“We need technology to solve a lot of the challenges that are happening in our industry, and we need investment to be able to continue to grow those technologies,” she says.

“So I think that investment piece, we are on a great track to attract more of that. But I think that's a big component of what takes us from a really major player to really skyrocketing us to the top in terms of being a market of choice for more of those technology companies.”

Oracle’s decision to move its global headquarters to Nashville represents a big step toward that goal. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s chairman, talked about the move to Music City during the company’s health summit last year, as the Associated Press reported.

“It’s the center of the industry we’re most concerned about, which is the healthcare industry,” Ellison said.

Oracle’s move to Nashville to be close to other health companies made an important statement, Childs-Potter says.

“I think that was eye opening for a lot of both investors and companies and tech talent leaders to recognize that Nashville is a market that can absorb a company of that scale and be able to meet the talent demands that a technology company has,” she says. “And so I think, between the talent and the investment, if we can get those two things to continue on the positive track, we'll be well positioned for the future.”

Nashville, and the state of Tennessee, has a favorable pro-business reputation, Childs-Potter says. The state has no income tax, which can also be a draw for professionals.

“We have a really diversified economy,” she says. “You've got really highly educated populations. You've just got all those ingredients that help make a market attractive for really any kind of industry. This one just happens to be really concentrated in health care.”