Determined to shape the future of healthcare in India, Dr Devi Prasad Shetty is breaking new ground in productivity, profitablity and affordability. By M Neelam Kachhap
Dr Devi Shetty, Founder Chairman of Narayana Health, is the ingenious man who wants to change the way healthcare is delivered around the world. He is celebrated world over as the man who made heart surgeries available and affordable for the poor. Taking a leaf out of CK Prahalad’s famous ‘bottom of the pyramid theory’, Dr Shetty designed an inventive method to bring heart surgery closer to the poorest socio-economic group in India without compromising on quality.
He created a movement called Narayana Hrudayalaya (now known as Narayana Health-NH). Today he is expanding this idea to include complex treatment modalities like cancer and organ transplant, while adding increasing number of beds to his already large healthcare conglomerate Narayana Health.
“When I started out in 2000, I never thought all this was possible,” Dr Shetty says. “We not only proved to ourself that it could happen but also to others,” he adds. Quite frankly he has achieved a lot in 15 years. Be it adding 7000 beds or health insurance at five rupees per month or building a world class health city, Dr Shetty has managed to grab it all.
Ground breaking idea
When Dr Shetty saw that sequential organisation of tasks around the operating table was achieving quick turn-around time for patients in less than half the cost; he not only institutionalised the process but also shared the theory with the world. Soon he was being labelled as “Henry Ford of cardiac surgeries”.
By applying the principles of assembly line production to cardiac surgery he was able to demonstrate that world-class cardiac surgery could be performed at lower costs. He achieved this difficult feat by enhanced productivity (more number of surgeries in a day than other surgeons) which in turn translated into affordability that brought profitability to the hospital.
High volume, low cost
India has a large number of patients seeking heart care. “Every year two million Indians need cardiac surgery, but only 100,000 to 120,000 are performed,” informs Dr Shetty. In addition there are a huge number of children with congenital heart defects that needs surgical correction.
“In India, a large number of children are born with a heart problem (600-800 per day),” adds Dr Shetty. He further says that, of these, 90 per cent perish gradually without ever getting any type of care.
Dr Shetty decided that he would not turn anybody wanting heart care back for want of funds. As a humanitarian, he wanted to help patients in need, which also allowed him to do high volumes to sustain the low cost of surgery.
Besides high volume, Dr Shetty was able to put in place a cross subsidised cost model for surgery where a poor patient’s surgery was paid for by a wealthy patient and by innovating the low cost insurance scheme.
Innovating insurance
Dissociate health from affluence
Healthcare is not only for the rich. The poor patients also need healthcare and Dr Shetty envisions India as the first country in the world to dissociate healthcare from affluence. This can be achieved through micro-insurance schemes, he says. “In India, there are about eight million mobile phone subscribers who spend around Rs 200 every month to speak on the phone. If the government allows them to pay Rs 20 extra on that phone bill for health insurance, I don’t think people would mind paying that additional money and there would be a corpus for the healthcare expenses,” explains Dr Shetty. “This will happen soon,” he adds with enthusiasm.
Cutting cost not quality
Dr Shetty believes that healthcare can translate into a profitable business. This profit could then be passed onto the patient. Cost-cutting is one of the ways to achieve this but quality becomes a major concern for many hospitals when thinking of cost-cutting. Dr Shetty does not compromise on quality.
A few years back he realised that his annual bill for sutures was very high and kept rising every year. “Our annual bill for sutures was coming up to $100,000 and rising by about five per cent each year,” he remembers. “We switched to less costly sutures by Centennial, cutting the expenditures in half to about $50,000,” he says.
In the wake of re-evaluating costs, Dr Shetty set up a medical disposable company called Amaryllis Healthcare. “We realised that other companies were only cutting and stitching disposable fabric bought in bulk to make disposable drapes,” shares Dr Shetty. “So, it was just a matter of procuring bulk material to make our own disposable drapes,” he says. Today, Amaryllis not only supplies NH with drapes but also exports to other countries. “Most hospitals rarely use disposable drapes, preferring linen because it is cheaper. But because of our scale, we switched and reduced our costs by 50 percent in the process,” he adds.
NH: At a glance
- It conducts 40 heart surgeries every day
- It has expertise in liver transplants on babies less than 10 kg weight with 95 per cent success rate
- It is the first heart hospital in Asia to implant an artificial heart
- It has performed combined kidney and pancreas transplant, offers formal training programme for paediatric cardiac surgery
- Thrombosis Research Institute, Bangalore a division of Narayana Health is working towards discovering a vaccine to prevent heart attack. The Institute has come up with markers to diagnose heart disease early
- Two units of NH, Narayana Institute of Cardiac Sciences, Bengaluru and Narayana Multispeciality Hospital, Jaipur are JCI-accredited and four others are NABH-accredited
Profit – loss analysis
Cost-cutting is not the only tool in Dr Shetty’s tool-kit. Profit-loss analysis is also used for diagnosing the financial health of the business.”To reduce cost of healthcare one must know how much we are spending today,” says Dr Shetty. “We have invested in a technology that lets us do exactly that,” he reveals. “Every day at noon, I get an SMS on my cell phone with previous day’s revenue, expense and earnings before interest, depreciation, taxation and amortization (EBITDA) margin. All doctors and administrators are also given a daily P&L calculation. This helps us stay above our competitors. More importantly, if there is a course correction required it can be done immediately,” shares Dr Shetty.
“For us, looking at a profit and loss account at the end of the month is like reading a post-mortem report. You cannot do anything about it. Whereas, if you monitor it on a daily basis, it works as a diagnostic tool. You can take remedial measures,” he further explains.
Create volumes of workers
Dr Shetty believes that workers in healthcare should be empowered to help in healthcare delivery. Technicians and executives can make a lot of difference but there are no dedicated skill enhancement programmes for people wanting to work in this area. “The health sector can create millions of jobs for the extremely skilled, semi skilled, and unskilled workers. We are looking at innovative ways to help them educate and absorb in the main workforce,” says Dr Shetty.
He also believes children from deprived background can become outstanding doctors. “If you look at almost all the outstanding surgeons in this world, they are all children from a deprived background,” he says. He believes that children from rural India aspire and have the zeal to be successful heart surgeons, neurosurgeons and other specialised medical professionals in fields that require more commitment and dedication. He also feels that these children can be motivated to use their training in improving healthcare systems in their villages and small towns.
He has launched a scholarship programme in rural West Bengal, with Asia Heart Foundation (AHF) for children interested in becoming doctors and medical professionals. At present they have 305 students taking benefits of the programme.
Insistence on accountability
Accountability is one of the major challenges in the Indian healthcare sector. Patient safety and quality are there on paper but not many hospitals take firm steps to address these issues. “At NH every hospital has a committee that addresses these issues. They meet every week to discuss mortality and morbidity incidences,” says Dr Shetty. “All data is collected and analysed to reduce morbidity,” he adds.
He says this has helped NH reduce the incidence of bed sore at the hospital. “Bed sore incidence globally is about 8-40 per cent following cardiac surgery and we wanted to reduce it to zero per cent. We accomplished it in three years. Now our protocol is being accepted by the American Nursing Association to reduce bed sore in US,” Dr Shetty says proudly. “Like this we have various standardised processes to reduced morbidity and reduce complications,” he adds.
Lobbying for better healthcare
Dr Shetty is one of the healthcare evangelists lobbying for better working condition of doctors. He is also a supporter of ‘Save the Doctors’ campaign that advocate equalisation of undergraduate (UG) and post-graduate (PG) seats in medical colleges. “Unless the government equalises the UG and PG seats in medical colleges, (50,000 UG and 14,000 PG seats) there will not be any rural healthcare. Maternal mortality and infant mortality will not come down. Overall, no future for healthcare unless medical education is liberated from the shackles of current policies,” he asserts.
Since, there are very few PG seats there is a dearth of specialist doctors. The few specialists that are available are all concentrated around urban areas and rural areas still lack specialist doctors. “Government has to do it,” Dr Shetty insists. “In India, 26-28 million babies are born every year of which one-fifth are born through C-section for which you need two lakh gynaecologists. But we only have 30,000 gynaecologists who are practising. Besides, we need anaesthetist, paellied staff it poses great concern to accountability. “Legal framework is ill defined for doctors. Without an MD degree you cannot do anything.,” laments Dr Shetty.
He also regrets the state of nurses in India. “The nursing profession may soon be extinct gal framework is ill-defined for doctors. Without an MD degree you cannot do anything,” laments Dr Shetty.
He also regrets the state of nurses in India. “The nursing profession may soon be extinct in India,” he says. The acute shortage of nurses in India is no secret. Nursing in India is not a preferred career choice. Besides long work hours and minimal wages, nurses also struggle with stagnation.” In developed countries nurses can specialise and become anaesthetist, intensivists but in India it’s not possible,” says Dr Shetty. He says that nurses should be specialised and empowered for better delivery of healthcare in India. “We should legally empower the nurses and bring them to level of junior doctor,” suggests Dr Shetty. He also says that these suggestions have been put to the health ministry and they are expected to take decision on these matters soon. “Yes! the government is listening and these things may be a reality soon,” says Dr Shetty.
Next big idea in healthcare
Talking about his next innovation, Dr Shetty says, “The next big thing in healthcare is not going to be a magic pill, a faster scanner or a new surgery technique, it will be information technology that will change the way healthcare is delivered and consumed.”
Indeed information technology is being used today to improve the quality of care in India. “The entire healthcare will be delivered on the matrix of information technology,” he reiterates.
However, healthcare is utilising information technology at a heightened pace now, so how is it going to be disruptive in future? Answering the question, Dr Shetty says, “Information technology has not been able to mould healthcare. There has not been enough innovation as yet, may be because of data security concerns or due to low penetration of technology.” Emphasising on his views, Dr Shetty says, “But in time to come all this will change. Healthcare services will be delivered by information technology.”
Talking about his tryst with technology, Dr Shetty says, “We are in the process of developing and testing a large number of applications for mobile phone, smart phone and internet.”
In fact, ICUs at Narayana Health, Bangalore are all paper free. “We have developed one app for the iPad. Our ICUs do not have paper, they have iPads. All the patient monitoring data is stored in the iPad and the patient is monitored through the iPad. Several other apps are being tested by us right now,” informs Dr Shetty.
Developing new technology is one of the focus areas of Narayana Health. “We have a major interest in developing technology. We are currently negotiating with one of the largest healthcare chains in US. They are very keen to take the iCare we have developed with Cognizant to the next level,” informs Dr Shetty.
mneelam.kachhap@expressindia.com