Estimating the indirect effect of hospitals via complementary health care firms.

A hospital's indirect economic impact on the surrounding community includes the stimulus to producers of complementary health care goods and services. These include physicians' offices, pharmacies, nursing homes, and medical laboratories. A multiple regression model, which can be estimated using county-level data from Bureau of the Census publications, demonstrates that a hospital does have significant effects on the number and activity of firms in complementary health care industries.