Texas Medical Center

The Texas Medical Center (TMC) is a neighborhood in south-central Houston, Texas, United States. It is immediately south of the Museum District and west of Texas State Highway 288.

Over 60 medical institutions, largely concentrated in a triangular area between Brays Bayou, Rice University, and Hermann Park, are members of the Texas Medical Center Corporation—a non-profit umbrella organization—which constitutes the largest medical center and life science destination in the world. As the world's largest medical center, it is also nicknamed as the "Medical Mini-City". The TMC has the world's highest density of clinical facilities for patient care, basic biomedical sciences, and translational research. The neighborhood is 2.1-square-mile (5.4 km²).

The Texas Medical Center employs over 106,000 people, hosts 10 million patient encounters annually, and has a gross domestic product of US$25 billion. Over the decades, the TMC has expanded south of Brays Bayou toward NRG Park and the organization has developed plans for a new "innovation campus" south of the river. The 4.93-square-mile (12.8 km²) Medical Center / Astrodome area, highly populated with medical workers, is home to over 20,000 people.

The TMC is served by the METRORail Red Line, a north-south light rail route which connects the district to Downtown Houston and NRG Park.

The Texas Medical Center contains 54 medicine-related institutions, with 21 hospitals and eight specialty institutions, eight academic and research institutions, four medical schools, seven nursing schools, three public health organizations, two pharmacy schools and a dental school. All 54 institutions are not-for-profit. Among the affiliated medical schools are McGovern Medical School, Baylor College of Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Texas A&M College of Medicine. Some member institutions are located outside the city of Houston.

In 2016, more heart surgeries were performed at the Texas Medical Center than anywhere else in the world with 13,600 heart surgeries annually. 180,000 annual surgeries were performed. The TMC performed one surgery every three minutes. Over 25,000 babies were delivered each year, more than one baby every 20 minutes. The Texas Medical Center offered over 9,200 total patient beds.

The Center receives an average of 3,300 patient visits a day, and over eight million annual patient visits, including over 18,000 international patients. The TMC has over 750,000 ER visitors each year. In 2011, the center employed over 106,000 people, including 20,000 physicians, scientists, researchers and other advanced degree professionals in the life sciences. The TMC has over 160,000 visitors each day.

The Texas Medical Center houses the world's largest children's hospital (Texas Children's Hospital), as well as the world's largest cancer hospital (MD Anderson Cancer Center).