News for North Texas
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

North Texas Hospitals Creating Jobs At Fast Pace

Justin Turveen

Last year North Texas hospitals created more than 265,000 jobs and pumped more than 14 billion dollars into the economy. That’s according to a new report from the Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Council.

The report, conducted every few years, shows an increase of nearly 30,000 jobs and 2.2 billion dollars from 2010.

Steve Love, president of the Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Council, says hospitals serve as economic engines in their communities:

“Sometimes people forget that hospitals are large employers,” Love says. “And hospitals do more than just care for people when they’re sick. They help support the community and the infrastructure of the community.”

Love says the growth in employment shown in this study is not tied to the Affordable Care Act because the lion’s share of that law is yet to take effect.

“As we go forward, it will be interesting to use this as a baseline to evaluate subsequent economic impact studies that we conduct,” Love says.

Lauren Silverman was the Health, Science & Technology reporter/blogger at KERA News. She was also the primary backup host for KERA’s Think and the statewide newsmagazine  Texas Standard. In 2016, Lauren was recognized as Texas Health Journalist of the Year by the Texas Medical Association. She was part of the Peabody Award-winning team that covered Ebola for NPR in 2014. She also hosted "Surviving Ebola," a special that won Best Long Documentary honors from the Public Radio News Directors Inc. (PRNDI). And she's won a number of regional awards, including an honorable mention for Edward R. Murrow award (for her project “The Broken Hip”), as well as the Texas Veterans Commission’s Excellence in Media Awards in the radio category.