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  #61  
Old Posted Jun 11, 2016, 11:32 PM
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
The TMC is huge, but does Houston have more healthcare than other cities, or is it more about the local hospitals being grouped more than usual? I've asked this question more than once, and nobody has replied with evidence.
And it is a good question. I wish there were a readily available answer.
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  #62  
Old Posted Jun 11, 2016, 11:56 PM
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Originally Posted by austlar1 View Post
Here is a link to the TMC website. There is a ton of information there concerning TMC and its constituent organizations. In addition to the huge medical presence found at TMC, the Houston area has maybe a dozen large (200 to 600 bed) hospitals located all over the metro area outside of the TMC. Most of them are branches of hospitals that are headquartered at TMC, but that is how hospital healthcare is delivered all over the country nowadays. TMC is absolutely a huge economic asset that alone provides in the vicinity of 100,000 jobs in just about every area of the medical and medical research professions. I don't think the true measure of TMC's economic impact to the area is to be found in how much revenue it attracts from outside the region. That is, of course, a significant figure, but the real economic value of TMC is to be found in the fact that it provides a good stable income for thousands and thousands of employees. It is not a cyclical industry, nor is it one that is likely to pull up and move elsewhere. I've seen you try to dismiss TMC in the past, but you are making a mistake to do so. Overall, Houston is on a par with or slightly ahead Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, or San Francisco in importance as a medical center. New York (and Boston to a lesser degree) remains the undisputed leader. http://www.texasmedicalcenter.org/about/
You haven't even addressed my question, let alone answered it. Healthcare is a huge industry in every city. I'm asking whether Houston's healthcare industry is bigger than in other cities. I'm not asking who has the biggest neighborhood cluster.
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  #63  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 12:20 AM
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
You haven't even addressed my question, let alone answered it. Healthcare is a huge industry in every city. I'm asking whether Houston's healthcare industry is bigger than in other cities. I'm not asking who has the biggest neighborhood cluster.
When you find those figures, please post them. I spent an hour trying to pull them apart. The Bureau of Labor Statistics wants to lump healthcare and education into one category, so the absolute numbers become kind of meaningless and tend to depend in large part in the overall size of the metro area. My hunch is that Houston has a larger healthcare industry than most other similarly sized or larger cities. There is just too much synergy created by the presence of this huge medical complex that it is hard to think otherwise. Does Houston pull in a lot of patients from faraway places? There is reason to believe that it does based on the fact that a lot of well known people have come to Houston for medical treatment (cancer or cardiac care mostly) over the years. There are several thousand hotel rooms in the immediate area of the TMC, but I can't tell you that 100% of their clientele is there for medical reasons. I can tell you this much, Houston is a much more interesting and culturally diverse city as a result of the TMC being located there. The presence of so many doctors and medical educators has played a big role in moving Houston past its somewhat raw beginnings. I know you are inclined to hate all things Houston, but I think you would be genuinely impressed with the TMC should you ever have a reason to visit. Any city in this country would be thrilled to have something like the TMC. Ironically it came to be in large part because of the philanthropic whim of one of Houston's more notorious right wing oil barons, Roy Cullen. That is a story for another day.
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  #64  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 12:27 AM
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Here is a fairly recent article about foreign visitors who come to TMC for treatment.
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/busi...al-5679236.php
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  #65  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 12:46 AM
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I don't like the direction this thread is taking (a typical Houston basher versus Houston booster thread) but with that said I forgot earlier that in addition to education and medicine, Houston also boasts the aerospace and engineering industries thanks to NASA, which has brought people from all over. This, not to mention a port.

So much for Houston being a modern day mining town as Bikemike put it. This place, while very reliant on an industry, is not one-dimensional.

Last edited by ThePhun1; Jun 12, 2016 at 1:58 AM.
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  #66  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 12:52 AM
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Here is an excerpt from a 2012 or 2013 article (http://www.politifact.com/texas/stat...tors-nurses-a/) concerning Rick Perry's inflated claim that Houston had the largest concentration of medical professionals in the world. The article found this claim to be FALSE, but it also includes some interesting stats about the relative size of Houston's medical community. It probably is the fourth largest in the country in raw numbers.

"Spokespeople for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics pointed out that its counts of health care professionals are based on the nation’s metropolitan statistical areas, which can fold in more than one city or county.

For that reason, we were ready to set them aside.

But the Greater Houston Partnership, which promotes the Houston-area economy, answered our inquiry by citing the bureau’s analysis. Spokesman Erik Noriega sent a chart drawing on the bureau’s work suggesting the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metro area has the fourth-most individuals (129,930) employed as "healthcare practitioners and technical occupations," a grouping that he said folds in surgeons, doctors, nurses, therapists, medical/clinical technologists and healthcare technicians. The New York (265,020), Los Angeles (206,300) and Chicago (188,340) areas have more workers in the fields, according to the estimates.

Separately, U.S. Census Bureau spokesman Robert Bernstein guided us to a table in its "County and City Data Book: 2007" stating the number of physicians by county for each state in 2004 as well as the ratio of physicians to every 100,000 county residents--a reasonable way of adjusting for population differences. In 2004, the table indicates, Harris County had 11,419 physicians, the fourth-highest total nationally behind California’s Los Angeles County (30,102 physicians); Illinois’s Cook County, home to Chicago (21,189); and New York County (19,849). Separately, a spokeswoman for the Harris County Medical Society, Jennifer Snyder, pointed out that according to the Texas Medical Board,, Harris County had 11,821 physicians as of September 2012."
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  #67  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 1:18 AM
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That's just looking at the total number of doctors per county. Harris County is the third largest county in the US in population, so having the fourth largest number of doctors for a county isn't really special. It's not surprising that Manhattan bats above its weight, but the fact that LA County (largest county in the US), Cook County (second largest), and Harris County (third largest) are right there is to be expected.

Just on my anecdotal experience, the TMC is certainly an asset and Houston probably does bat slightly above its weight in medicine, but the TMC is nowhere near the earth-shattering economic powerhouse that boosters claim. It's simply the type of thing that you'd expect from the ninth largest metro area in the US.

That said, I absolutely praise Houston for some of the things that the metro is truly great at like providing enough housing, some interesting transit ideas, and one of the best melting pots in the US. It gets a bad rap on SSP that I don't think is deserved, especially when compared to other peer cities. I hope that this article is wrong, and Houston continues to churn out "class A" apartments at a healthy clip.
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  #68  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 1:21 AM
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For years I have seen the TMC dissed on here and for uears I've seen Houstonians post the same things about it. No, it's not just a group of local hospitals. Other areas of the city have always had their own medical centers/hospitals. What Houston has with the TMC is unique and not very many cities have complexes like it.

And since when does Houston have higher unemployment than rust belt cities? The city still has relatively low unemployment. A lot of the energy companies have been laying off but also consolidating workers to Houston during this slump. The east side of the metro is booming right now because the plants are expanding due to low prices. Houston needs to diversify some more with some help from the state. Seems that one of the I-35 cities (DFW, Austin, or SA) get more companies that move there that aren't in energy. I think the city should lobby harder for companies looking to move into the state. Still with downstream energy, medical, logistics (port is booming too), new major university, and green energy doing well, I think the city will. And oil is expected to go up to $60 this year and into next. Thats a good place to be for the city and American consumers. Houston is entering it's next phase of growth and development where it'll be even less reliant on the energy industry for growth, this time without an economic tank.
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  #69  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 1:33 AM
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
The TMC is huge, but does Houston have more healthcare than other cities, or is it more about the local hospitals being grouped more than usual? I've asked this question more than once, and nobody has replied with evidence.

I'm not going by US News. Though they put my city #1 in some categories too.

I'm referring to being the best in some categories of medicine. Lots of cities are #1 in various categories, and Houstonians go there too. The TMC, Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, and others all have ways they claim to be the leaders. It's certainly a net inflow for those cities. But how much money is actually coming in from elsewhere vs. local money?
It's a good question about the net inflow. Not very many sources on medical tourism, TMC pegs its own medical tourism as approximately 20,000 patients per year, with 3000 international patients. However, I couldn't find anything on Boston.

I'd argue Houston would be over represented since its more isolated than the Midwest and East Coast while not having as many renewed centers to compete with. Houston is in an odd spot where it straddles the South and Southwest.
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  #70  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 1:34 AM
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
You haven't even addressed my question, let alone answered it. Healthcare is a huge industry in every city. I'm asking whether Houston's healthcare industry is bigger than in other cities. I'm not asking who has the biggest neighborhood cluster.
Well clustering is very important across industries, especially when you have some of the top hospitals all in one area.
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  #71  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 1:45 AM
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Originally Posted by Gordo View Post
That's just looking at the total number of doctors per county. Harris County is the third largest county in the US in population, so having the fourth largest number of doctors for a county isn't really special. It's not surprising that Manhattan bats above its weight, but the fact that LA County (largest county in the US), Cook County (second largest), and Harris County (third largest) are right there is to be expected.

Just on my anecdotal experience, the TMC is certainly an asset and Houston probably does bat slightly above its weight in medicine, but the TMC is nowhere near the earth-shattering economic powerhouse that boosters claim. It's simply the type of thing that you'd expect from the ninth largest metro area in the US.

That said, I absolutely praise Houston for some of the things that the metro is truly great at like providing enough housing, some interesting transit ideas, and one of the best melting pots in the US. It gets a bad rap on SSP that I don't think is deserved, especially when compared to other peer cities. I hope that this article is wrong, and Houston continues to churn out "class A" apartments at a healthy clip.
That's a pretty fair assement. My whole point was that higher education was the key to unlocking TMC's potential. We already got the facilities and top notch care and treatment all in one area, but we are missing the commercial side that comes with having good universities around. Hopefully TMC will proceed with its own quasi-private research campus and the UT system goes ahead with its STEM flagship located several miles south of the TMC.
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  #72  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 3:40 AM
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Originally Posted by TexasPlaya View Post
It's a good question about the net inflow. Not very many sources on medical tourism, TMC pegs its own medical tourism as approximately 20,000 patients per year, with 3000 international patients. However, I couldn't find anything on Boston.

I'd argue Houston would be over represented since its more isolated than the Midwest and East Coast while not having as many renewed centers to compete with. Houston is in an odd spot where it straddles the South and Southwest.
The article I cited above (and again here: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/busi...al-5679236.php) states that about 20,000 international patients come to the TMC every year for treatment, which is about half of the pre 9/11 figure of around 40,000 per year. There was no information cited with regards to patients coming from other parts of Texas and the US for treatment at TMC.
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  #73  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 5:06 AM
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Originally Posted by austlar1 View Post
When you find those figures, please post them. I spent an hour trying to pull them apart. The Bureau of Labor Statistics wants to lump healthcare and education into one category, so the absolute numbers become kind of meaningless and tend to depend in large part in the overall size of the metro area. My hunch is that Houston has a larger healthcare industry than most other similarly sized or larger cities. There is just too much synergy created by the presence of this huge medical complex that it is hard to think otherwise. Does Houston pull in a lot of patients from faraway places? There is reason to believe that it does based on the fact that a lot of well known people have come to Houston for medical treatment (cancer or cardiac care mostly) over the years. There are several thousand hotel rooms in the immediate area of the TMC, but I can't tell you that 100% of their clientele is there for medical reasons. I can tell you this much, Houston is a much more interesting and culturally diverse city as a result of the TMC being located there. The presence of so many doctors and medical educators has played a big role in moving Houston past its somewhat raw beginnings. I know you are inclined to hate all things Houston, but I think you would be genuinely impressed with the TMC should you ever have a reason to visit. Any city in this country would be thrilled to have something like the TMC. Ironically it came to be in large part because of the philanthropic whim of one of Houston's more notorious right wing oil barons, Roy Cullen. That is a story for another day.
Hate it? You're projecting. I've said Houston is not very urban and I prefer urban places, but that only equals hate in your mind.

As for the visitor thing, we're all clear that the TMC is #1 for certain maladies and therefore visited for it, much like certain other cities. The question is volume.
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  #74  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 5:17 AM
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Originally Posted by austlar1 View Post
The article I cited above (and again here: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/busi...al-5679236.php) states that about 20,000 international patients come to the TMC every year for treatment, which is about half of the pre 9/11 figure of around 40,000 per year. There was no information cited with regards to patients coming from other parts of Texas and the US for treatment at TMC.
That could be a decent economic impact. If the average medical tourist spends as much as a good annual salary, that's roughly equal to Houston's largest employer's entire local payroll. Not like a major economic sector in terms of inbound dollars if my average is accurate, but significant.
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  #75  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 1:41 PM
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This forum loves to talk about Houston, in both a good and bad way.
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  #76  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 1:55 PM
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There's no more controversial city among +2,000,000 metros.
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  #77  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 2:00 PM
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Originally Posted by Gordo View Post
That's just looking at the total number of doctors per county. Harris County is the third largest county in the US in population, so having the fourth largest number of doctors for a county isn't really special. It's not surprising that Manhattan bats above its weight, but the fact that LA County (largest county in the US), Cook County (second largest), and Harris County (third largest) are right there is to be expected.

Just on my anecdotal experience, the TMC is certainly an asset and Houston probably does bat slightly above its weight in medicine, but the TMC is nowhere near the earth-shattering economic powerhouse that boosters claim. It's simply the type of thing that you'd expect from the ninth largest metro area in the US.
Pretty much! /Close thread
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  #78  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 3:14 PM
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There's no more controversial city among +2,000,000 metros.
phoenix...
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  #79  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 3:58 PM
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Houston comes up a lot. When people post anything positive or negative, it'll start a debate, whether that's about zoning, the TMC, the concept of townhouses with two-car garages, claims about biggest ports, or whatever. Phoenix doesn't get a lot of posts like that, so people don't debate it much.

Atlanta and LA might debate the "most controversial" thing.
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  #80  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2016, 6:54 PM
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
Houston comes up a lot. When people post anything positive or negative, it'll start a debate, whether that's about zoning, the TMC, the concept of townhouses with two-car garages, claims about biggest ports, or whatever. Phoenix doesn't get a lot of posts like that, so people don't debate it much.

Atlanta and LA might debate the "most controversial" thing.
Atlanta? People don't really discuss Atlanta on this forum other than when a sprawl topic comes up. Really, only like 5 or 6 cities are discussed on this forum commonly.
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