The annual report calls attention to the ongoing love affair between hospitals and fast-food chains. Currently, you can find a Chick-fil-A in at least 20 American hospitals, McDonald’s in at least 18, and Wendy’s in at least five, according to the authors. And in a few messed-up cases, hospitals actually have incentive to drive sales for the fast-food restaurants they harbor. Ben Taub General Hospital in Houston, Texas, for example, rents space to McDonald’s, and the more food the chain sells, the more monthly rent the restaurant pays to the hospital, according to reports obtained by PCRM..At Greenville Memorial Hospital in Greenville, South Carolina, a contract with Chick-fil-A requires the hospital to “make every reasonable effort to increase sales and business and maximize the Gross Receipts.” MORE: The Seven Best Fast Food Chains for Real Food Of course, there’s another way these hospitals make money on pushing fast food: The more people eat it, the more they need costly medical procedures like gastric and triple bypasses, as numerous studies continue to show that fast food is associated with weight gain, heart disease, and a host of other health problems. Our healthcare system is not entirely f*cked beyond repair, though. The PCRM reports have resulted in a small handful of improvements: Three hospitals in the past have severed ties with fast food due to PCRM exposure, while seven others have ended contracts with fast-food chains independently of the reports. MORE: Pepsi to Take Aspartame Out of Diet Soda Yet that still leaves a lot of room for improvement. So we reached out to five hospitals mentioned in the latest report to ask whether they planned on rethinking contracts with their fast-food friends. Only two have responded so far: Georgia Regents Medical Center denies the claim that its patients can get “McDelivery” to their rooms (!!!) and says that McDonald’s “is not intended to be a potential revenue stream for the hospital.” As for Ben Taub in Houston, a representative says that its Mickey D’s “is a small part of the entire food service operation at the hospital and is not part of the inpatient meal service.” But that contract with the Golden Arches? That’s locked down until 2022.
