It would be even more today and given all the rest of local health care (Harbin Clinic, etc.) is not even in this tally it is plain that this sector is well more than a billion-dollar industry.
Since this is a relatively high-dollar area it is difficult to gauge how much of the total Greater Rome economy this might represent. For example while Floyd “sustains” 5,225 jobs with its $504.6 million in economic impact, and Redmond 2,580 with its $320.6 million they are listed as themselves employing fewer directly. Floyd has 2,430 full and part-time employees, Redmond 1,200. With the Floyd County jobless rate hovering at 10 percent, and containing about 5,000 residents, that means the hospitals actually provide paychecks directly for somewhat less than 10 percent of the community.
The important figure, easily missed, is that those totals count what is called the “economic multiplier” that more than doubles the dollars generated by the hospital operations themselves ($218.1 million for Floyd, $138.6 million for Redmond). That’s the ripple of services/purchases for medical supplies, equipment, pharmaceuticals and such, according to the association.
That “ripple” is actually wider in a way more difficult to count. Those patients and their families, particularly from surrounding areas, also often eat out, sometimes stay overnight, go shopping while “in town” and so forth. That supports a lot of other jobs, too.
Indeed, in a sense and harkening to the current push to increase local sports-geared tourism, the constant existence of the hospitals is sort of like having two major tennis tournaments running at the same time for 365 days a year.