India's Philanthropist-Surgeon Delivers Cardiac Care Henry Ford-Style
$106,000 Heart Surgery Costs $1,500 in India
NPR.org
Read about how this amazing Indian heart surgeon makes surgery affordable for all people in need. Excerpt "Devi Shetty says Narayana's profits are poured back into the enterprise, which now has 29 hospitals in India. The volume of surgeries has drawn comparisons to the assembly lines of Henry Ford. It's not something Shetty shies away from: "The is the way forward for the world," he says. "It's pointless building boutique hospitals where one surgery or two heart surgeries are done in a day. We need to have a few hospitals, but these hospitals should do very large numbers. Then your quality improves, costs go down," he says. Shetty contends people are entitled to care regardless of how little they earn. "We do about 30 major heart surgeries a day. And we have never refused a patient because they have no money." The fees from the rich offset the costs for the poor. Patients with money pay several thousand dollars for open heart surgery. But patients with little money — and little hope of raising any — pay very little. They are 60 percent of the cases.
The head of the charitable trust wing, Lakshmi Mani, says there's no complicated test to determine who's eligible for free surgery. "One look at them and we can make out: They are poor, they don't have the money. And once we start doubting their credentials, there's no end to it," Mani says."
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