Sunil Kumar, the chief operating officer of Narayana Hrudayalaya
Hospitals, starts off the interview with some mind-blowing figures:
"In 2001 we had one cardiac hospital with 225 beds, this year we
run 13 hospitals with more than 4.000 beds. Our aim is to build
hospitals in all Indian cities and offer 30.000 beds. We now
perform 7.000 open heart surgeries yearly."
"In comparison", adds professor Frits van Merode (dean sciences
and board member of Maastricht University), "In the Maastricht
academic hospital we yearly perform 1.100 of such operations."
The vision of Dr. Shetty
India is big, and therefore 'big thinking' is allowed in India.
The clear need for better healthcare among the large part of the
population that is still very poor made dr. Devi Shetty (the
founder of Narayana Hrudayalaya )devise a scalable system of
surgery.
Last year Dr. Shetty received The Economist Innovation Award for
taking a "Henry Ford-view" to health care. The jury
proclaimed: "Dr. Shetty has shown that better health care
need not cost more. Better processes can make a huge difference. He
is renowned for his skill as a surgeon, but we are recognising his
additional talent as an innovator."
Mortality rates
And quantity goes hand in hand with quality: The Economist
pointed out that Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital reported a 1.4 per
cent mortality rate within 30 days of coronary-artery bypass-graft
surgery, compared with an average of 1.9 per cent mortality rate in
America."
It was Shetty that motivated Sunil Kumar to become involved in
the hospital-project. "I met him at a conference 22 years ago
and I was very impressed by his visionary thinking. Ever since I
have been part of his journey."
Kumar mentions the story of a newly married couple that had a
baby with a cardiac problem. "Surgery cost 250.000 rupiahs, that's
about $ 4.000, and of course those parents don't have that amount
of money. It is an awful thing: you are tagging the life of that
child with a price. There is no other solution to this problem than
bringing down the price of health care."
Fraction of the average price
Bringing down costs is something that Narayana Hrudayalaya does
pretty well: at this moment an open hearth operation is performed
at the price of $2.000 euro, but the hospital is aiming at a
break-even price of $800. A quick internet search shows that
elsewhere in the world average prices run at $20.000.
The best of both worlds
The work of Narayana Hrudayalaya neatly fits in with the work of
Frits de Merode: "I used to work in Africa and India a lot, started
a project looking for the best hospitals of the world at the bottom
of the pyramid. Hospitals that service not the rich, but the poor."
Mr. Kumar and Mr. Van Merode share the same motivation: the quest
for making healthcare accessible to all people.
In 2009 Maastricht University and Narayana Hrudayalaya embarked
on a unique initiative to build capacity through partnerships. Van
Merode: "We are building thematic research centres in India, based
on the best that both sides have to offer."
"The concept of problem based learning has been very
interesting for us", adds Sunil Kumar. "This is very different from
what we are used to. It triggers innovative thinking." On the other
hand it's the innovative practice in the Indian operating room that
fascinates partners in Maastricht.
Social relevance
Van Merode: "In the last 24 months we have had more than a dozen
research scholars from India working for their PhD with Maastricht
University, and a few doctors are perceiving their full time PhD
programme here." Moreover Maastricht University has opened a
subsidiary (Maastricht Education and Research Centre- MERC) in
Bangalore. The mandate for this unique India initiative is to build
partnerships with the best in India and build top quality research
in select areas of social relevance."