Kudos to Dr Shetty

And then there was this one about Dr Devi Shetty’s Narayana Hrudayalaya in Bangalore, titled ‘Heart in the right place.’ Dr Devi Shetty must be awesome human being, and is living the adage, where there is a will, there is a way.
In his interview he recounts how, as a doctor in a Calcutta in 1989, out of every 100 patients he saw, 99 could not afford heart surgery. He realized that to really solve the problem, he had to look at how to reduce the cost. Hence was born his idea of Narayana Hrudayalaya- a hospital with state of the art medical facilities, available at a fraction of their costs at other hospitals. This is achieved by staggering the cost across the day. So a brain scan that costs Rs 5000 at 2 pm, will cost only Rs 500 at 2 am- this is possible because the equipment is a one time cost. Coupled with the micro-health insurance scheme adopted by the Karnataka government, that is based on a model of economies of scale, modern healthcare has now been made possible for 80 percent of the state’s population. To quote from the article, ‘since they are so large, and can accommodate so many, the notional cost of each procedure drops drastically- a benefit they can pass on to those who really need it.’

This is a wonderful model, but can only work if welfare, and not only profits, stays a priority. And yet it is important to make it a sustainable model, for it to stay on course and not fall prey to corruption as many government welfare schemes do.