Narayan Health, founded by leading cardiac surgeon Dr Devi Shetty, could easily be mistaken for just another 'corporate' hospital chain. But by ensuring that the poor get equal access to world-class health care, they have proved that they are so much more
Award: Good Company
Narayana Health
Age: 60
Why He Won: For setting up a 6,000-bed multi-specialty hospital chain across India that provides world-class treatment based on a cross-subsidised model.
His Trigger: Most Indians cannot afford tertiary and specialty health care. One of the biggest reasons for them falling below the poverty line is an illness in the family.
His Mission: To create multi-specialty ‘health cities’ where every health need can be provided at an affordable price.
His Action Plan: Build expertise in specialties other than cardiac and cancer care; expand to more cities; use technology to cut costs, improve outcomes.
His Next Move: Taking Narayana Health global by opening a 140-bed multi-specialty hospital in the
Cayman Islands.
The Cayman Islands are a group of three islands located in the western Caribbean Sea. Largely uninhabited till the 17th century, the islands are today one of 14 British Overseas Territories worldwide. Financial services and tourism are called its “twin pillars” of economic development.
In less than three months, the Cayman Islands will kick off its attempts to add a third leg to its economy—specialty tertiary care medical treatment.
Health City Cayman Islands, a cutting-edge 140-bed tertiary care hospital specialising in cardiac surgery, cardiology and orthopaedics, will open in early 2014. By 2024, the hospital hopes to grow to 2,000 beds while adding other tertiary care specialties like neurology and oncology, a medical university and an assisted-care living community.
For Indian doctors lured by the professional premise of Health City (or by the salubrious climes of the Cayman Islands), the prognosis is good. Because their Indian medical degrees will be recognised in the Cayman Islands, which makes it the only country other than, well, India, to do so.
Reason: Health City is a joint-venture between Ascension Health Care Alliance, a US Catholic health care organisation, and Narayana Hrudayalaya, the hospital chain founded by noted cardiac surgeon Dr Devi Prasad Shetty.
The pieces of the puzzle suddenly fall into place.
“When the Premier of Cayman Islands visited us to discuss this project, we gave him only one condition: They have to recognise Indian medical degrees,” says Dr Shetty. “Today Indian doctors cannot even practice in Pakistan. They said, ‘Look, we are a British Protectorate’. But in the end they changed the law.”
He is sitting in an ante-room connected to his larger chamber at NJ Health City, or Narayana Hrudayalaya as it is still popularly known across Bangalore. Spread across 26 acres on Hosur Road, the 3,000-bed flagship hospital facility of his group includes the 1,000-bed Narayana Institute of Cardiac Sciences and the 1,400-bed Mazumdar-Shaw Medical Center which specialises in cancer care.
Our scheduled appointment was an hour ago but there is a reason for the delay—Dr Shetty is coming out of back-to-back cardiac surgeries, as he almost always does. He is still wearing his scrub cap as he quickly takes a few bites of lunch while being interviewed.
If you have met Dr Shetty more than once, you will know that such multiprocessing is his default mode. One gets the sense that he manages to squeeze in about 30 to 36 hours into a 24-hour day.
Back to his upcoming Health City project, we ask: Why the Caribbean islands? Surely, it can’t be a co-incidence that the Cayman Islands are just 700 km off the coast of Florida, US?
“Today 40 million people living in the Caribbean region are dependent on the US for health care. We want to create an alternative for them,” he says. “Nobody wants you to disrupt the status quo, but the government and people of Cayman Islands want us to be there.” In other words, Health City is Dr Shetty’s shot across the US’s bow, the largest and arguably most expensive health care market in the world.
“People think doing cardiac surgery for $1,400 in India is no big deal, but when we start doing that in the Cayman Islands, then people have to take it seriously,” he points out. “We want to show the US that you can reduce the price of quality health care. If the world has to change health care, the US has to change.”
Profitable Philanthropy
Though Dr Shetty’s and, by extension, Narayana Health’s core expertise lay in cardiac surgery, the group has expanded to numerous other specialties from cancer care to neurosciences to dental care. Does the process-oriented approach to innovation work in all these areas as well?
(This story appears in the 13 December, 2013 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)