Narayana Health inspires west in effective healthcare management, reveals a new book

New Delhi: Two leading professors from America have come up with a book that reveals four pathways being used by health-care organizations in the United States to apply Indian-style principles to attack the exorbitant costs, uneven quality, and incomplete access to health care. This books was launched on 10th July 2018.

‘Reverse Innovation in Health Care: How to Make Value-Based Delivery Work’ a new book by Vijay Govindarajan and Ravi Ramamurti unravels the issues global healthcare industry grapples with, and highlights some of their learning from successful business models in India in the quest for high-quality, low-cost care for all.

As part of the journey, the authors spoke to over two dozen hospitals and interviewed more than 125 executives both in India and the United States. The book divulges how the innovations developed by some Indian exemplars are already being practiced by some far-sighted US providers, reversing the typical flow of innovation in the world. The model on which Narayana Health has been created and successfully implemented to make quality healthcare affordable to the masses is being considered by many in the US as a possible solution.

Author Vijay Govindarajan said, ‘India has been inspiring the world with many innovative initiatives in the recent past including affordable healthcare. Bangalore headquartered hospital chain Narayana Health is a great example in offering affordable solution, with results that were impressive to Western observers. In doing so, Dr Devi Shetty fulfilled his high-minded purpose and also built a very profitable company. From the beginning, even the most expensive surgical at Narayana hospitals were priced 20%-40% less than the same offerings at any other private Indian hospitals. He did not do this by cutting cost but by being an innovator; he simply did it by stepping over traditional boundaries and painting outside the lines.

One prominent and successful case is Health City Cayman Islands. Ascension (the nation’s largest non-profit health system and the largest Catholic health system in the world) in their quest to bring innovative, high-quality, low-cost tertiary healthcare services to the Cayman Islands partnered with Narayana Health and the Cayman government in 2012. The result was Health City Cayman Islands (HCCI), a 104-bed tertiary care hospital on Grand Cayman. After working closely for nearly four years with leaders from Narayana and the government in an innovative public-private partnership to build the strengths and capabilities of HCCI, the hospital is now achieving its vision. ’ added Author Ravi Ramamurti.

The book reveals four pathways being used by health-care organizations in the United States to apply Indian-style principles to attack the exorbitant costs, uneven quality, and incomplete access to health care. With rich stories and detailed accounts of medical professionals who are putting these ideas into practice, this book shows how value-based delivery can be made to work in the United States. It elaborates “bottom-up” change doesn’t require a grand plan out of Washington DC, agreement between entrenched political parties, or coordination among all players in the health-care system. It needs entrepreneurs with innovative ideas about delivering value to patients. Reverse innovation has worked in other industries. We need it now in health care.