Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty

Cardiologist

In 2001, Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty founded Narayana Hrudayalaya (NH), a multi-specialty hospital in Bommasandra on the outskirts of Bangalore. He believes that the cost of healthcare can be reduced by 50 percent in the next 5–10 years if hospitals adopt the idea of economies of scale. Apart from cardiac surgery, NH also has cardiology, neurosurgery, paediatric surgery, haematology and transplant services, and nephrology among various others. The heart hospital is the largest in the world with 1000 beds performing over 30 major heart surgeries a day. The land on which the health city was built, was previously a marshland which was reclaimed for this purpose.

The Health City intends to cater to about 15,000 outpatients every day. In August 2012, Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty announced an agreement with TriMedx, a subsidiary of Ascension Health, to create a joint venture aimed at taking healthcare throughout India. In the past Narayana Hrudayalaya has collaborated with Ascension Health to set up a health care city in Cayman Islands, planned to eventually have 2,000 beds. Shetty also founded Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences (RTIICS) in Kolkata. Shetty has also signed a MOU with the Karnataka Government during the Global Investor’s meet to build a 10 billion 5,000 bed super speciality hospital near the Bangalore International Airport. His company has sighed MOU with Government of Gujarat, for setting up 5000 bed hospital at Ahmedabad. His company has built low cost 150 bed hospital at Mysore on land provided by Government and used cross ventilation instead of air conditioning, to cut investment cost. He was a part of the seven-member panel of Board of Governors which replaced the MCI and served for a period of one year before it was further reconstituted. His hospitals have reduced costs by taking advantage of the economies of scale, this allows them to complete heart surgeries for a hundredth of the cost in the United States. The Wall Street Journal has given him the title of Henry Ford of heart surgery. In 2013 six new hospitals will be opened on the Narayana Hrudayalaya model, across the country which will provide high quality treatment at low cost. In the next seven years, there are plans to expand to 30,000 beds with hospitals in India, Africa and other countries in Asia. In 2013, Bloomberg News reported that Shetty has trimmed costs with such measures as buying cheaper scrubs and eschewing air-conditioning. That has cut the price of coronary bypass surgery to 95,000 rupees ($1,583), half of what it was 20 years ago. Bloomberg said that he aims to get the price down to $800 within a decade. The same procedure costs $106,385 at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic. He has also eliminated many pre ops testing and innovated in patient care such as “drafting and training patients’ family members to administer after-surgical care”. Surgeons in his hospitals perform 30 to 35 surgeries a day compared to one or two in a US hospital. His hospitals also provide substantial free care especially for poor girl children. In many parts of rural northern India, the poor refer to Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty as Bypasswale Baba, i.e. the Saint who Grants Bypasses. Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty and his family have a 75 percent stake in Narayana Hrudayalaya which he plans to preserve so that he does not have to compromise on the freedom or decision making power in his mission to help the underprivileged and to bring down the cost of healthcare in the country.