The five-story Medical Education Building, which recently opened in Tyler's Midtown District, represents more than a construction milestone. The $308 million UT Tyler School of Medicine facility, which is connected by skybridge to UT Health East Texas, is the most significant single real estate investment in the region in recent memory, and its economic implications extend well beyond the practice of medicine.
Healthcare is already Tyler's dominant industry. According to UT Tyler's Hibbs Institute, it accounts for 17.5 percent of the local economy: more than oil and gas, manufacturing, and retail. CHRISTUS Trinity Mother Frances and UT Health East Texas together employ nearly 9,000 people.
The American Hospital Association adds that every dollar a hospital spends generates approximately $2.30 in additional economic activity across the surrounding community. That means that in Tyler, healthcare is the single most consequential driver of commercial activity in Smith County.
Opening a medical school is Tyler is designed to address physician shortages across East Texas. Each graduating doctor who remains in the region becomes a commercial tenant, an employer, and a catalyst for the medical office development that follows healthcare access wherever it takes root.
That skybridge isn't just a walkway between two buildings. It's a bridge between where Tyler has been and where East Texas is headed.
Originally published in the Tyler Morning Telegraph.
