The secret sauce that makes Nashville a hub for the healthcare industry

With 900 health companies based in Nashville, Music City has become one of the nation’s key centers for the healthcare industry.

Apryl Childs-Potter, president of the Nashville Health Care Council, says the region is aiming to draw more healthcare companies to the region. Oracle recently announced its plans to move its global headquarters to Nashville.

In an interview with Chief Healthcare Executive®, Childs-Potter outlines the plans to make Nashville an even bigger player in the industry. She also offers interesting perspectives on how the city has been so successful in attracting and cultivating healthcare companies.

The secret sauce

“Our secret sauce is this level of collaboration, and it's truly just built into the DNA of Nashville,” she 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 like to say, everybody's going to take a meeting with you the first time. You have to earn the second one. But, regardless of who it is in the community, people are really willing to reach back and help people you know with their business, to mentor, to be willing to take a meeting to hear about your business.”

Local expertise

Nashville has 500 healthcare companies directly serving patients, and another 400 companies supporting them.

“Nashville's service provider industry that supports healthcare has grown up with the industry, which means that as these big companies that are publicly traded were growing, they were also tapping local law firms and local accounting firms and local design firms. And through that effort, you have really specialized expertise in the service industry here. So if you're going to buy a hospital anywhere in the US, it is very likely that your attorney has either is sitting in Nashville, or has been trained or connected into Nashville.”

Being intentional

“That idea of growing the economy so intentionally and being really focused on healthcare as an industry, I think is really unique. I also think that … our executives are really intentional with their time and effort. We say, when we have networking events and we host things, people are talking about the healthcare industry. You know, they're not talking about sports. They're not talking about what's happening in the world. They really talk about how we move healthcare forward. And I think that energy that is created here, and that willingness to really talk about these things, is just attractive to people. So they want to be here, they want to be part of it. They want to be connected into it. And our job is to sort of continue to cultivate that.”