Price transparency is still a foreign concept in America’s mainstream health care landscape. But for nations like India, price transparency is mainstream, and it is the driving force behind Dr. Devi Shetty’s relentless passion to provide the highest quality cardiac care to the masses at the lowest possible cost.
A “maniac on a mission,” Dr. Shetty is a world-renowned surgeon, having performed over 60,000 cardiac surgeries in the span of his career. His privately funded flagship hospital that was established in 2001, Narayana Hrudayalaya (NH) – which translates to “God’s compassionate home” – is a well-oiled machine that specializes in cardiac care, with 40% of its cases in pediatric heart surgery. It is what Harvard Business School Professor Regina Herzlinger would call a true focused factory, given that case volume is on average two times higher than U.S. competitors – a positive correlation to quality care.
In India, there isn’t much of a choice but to be price transparent. Less than 14 percent of the population has private insurance, and just one percent of the nation’s GDP is spent on public health expenditures. So Dr. Shetty and his team leverage price transparency to their advantage to be able to perform open-heart surgeries at an average price of $2,000. Compare that to a minimum of $20,000 and as much as upward of $100,000 in the U.S.
So how exactly does price transparency help? Read more from my latest newsletter here.