Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center generated more than $375 million in revenue for the local and state economy in 2016, according to a report by the Georgia Hospital Association.
 
The report also found that, during the same period, Piedmont Athens Regional provided over $23 million in uncompensated care while sustaining 6,015 full-time jobs throughout the county and state.
 
“While Piedmont Athens Regional is well known for its role in meeting the health care needs of the residents of Athens-Clarke and the surrounding counties, it also plays an integral role in protecting our area’s economic health,” Charles Peck, M.D., president and CEO of Piedmont Athens Regional, said. “We are thankful for the community’s partnership with their local hospital and will continue to work hard to ensure that area residents have access to the best and safest health care services available.”
 
The report revealed that Piedmont Athens Regional had direct expenditures of more than $366 million in 2016. When combined with the economic multiplier developed by the United States Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, the total economic impact of those expenditures was over $843 million.
 
This output multiplier considers the “ripple” effect of direct hospital expenditures on other sectors of the economy, such as medical supplies, durable medical equipment and pharmaceuticals. Economic multipliers are used to model the resulting impact of a change in one industry on the “circular flow” of spending within an economy as a whole.
 
According to the same economic impact report, including Piedmont Columbus and Piedmont Walton which joined the Piedmont system this year, Piedmont Healthcare generated more than $2 billion in revenue for the local and state economy. In addition to sustaining nearly 30,000 full-time jobs across the state, Piedmont Healthcare provided over $165 million in uncompensated care in 2016.