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Devi Shetty’s hospital of the future
 
London heart attack sufferers taken to a specialist cardiac centre have a 60% chance of survival, whereas those taken to a standard A&E unit only have, at best, a 26% chance of survival: according to unpublished information from the London Ambulance Service.

Experts say that the current provision of cardiac services in north and east London have, "relatively poor patient outcomes in comparison to the rest of England", and suggest that St Bartholomew's Hospital in central London should be transformed into a huge cardiovascular surgery unit, and a hub for a comprehensive network of care, which would embrace GPs and local hospitals.

For years, Devi Shetty, world-renowned heart surgeon, philanthropist, Founder, Chairman and Executive Director of Narayana Health, one of Indian’s leading private hospital groups, has argued that, "One hundred or 200 bed hospitals are not the solution". Narayana Health has Asia's largest cardiac centre providing affordable world-class cardiac care. "Large specialist cardiac centres, treating high volumes of patients, staffed by specialists and equipped with the latest technology, save lives, reduce complications, lower costs, and are the hospitals of the future," says Shetty.

 
The Bart's heart centre
 
The proposed new Bart's Heart Centre is similar in concept to Shetty's 1,000-bed cardiac hospital in Bengaluru, which attracts patients from more than 70 countries, and each year, performs some 7,000 surgeries; 50% on children and new-borns. It also serves as a centre of excellence for cardiac services in regional communities.
 
The importance of culture
 
Besides size, Shetty also appreciates the significance of culture in developing the hospital of the future.
 
In Narayana's 24 hospitals in 23 cities, Shetty has developed a culture of improving clinical outcomes while reducing costs. All Narayana's 14,000 employees are committed to providing affordable world-class integrated healthcare services for people with complex medical needs.
 
No matter how large the new London cardiac centre, without an outcomes-orientated culture supported by every employee, the quality of patient care is likely to be inferior to that of Narayana Health.
 
Outcomes obsessed
 
Narayana's outcomes data are systematically collected, organised, widely shared and used to improve clinical guidelines and decision aids. Data sharing in Narayana creates peer completion and self-regulation, which improves clinical outcomes, without incurring the costs of heavy regulation and unwieldy bureaucracy.
 
Narayana's surgical outcomes compare well against the world's best. Its mortality rate within 30 days of the high-volume coronary artery bypass surgery is 1.4%, compared with an average of 1.8% for England and 1.9% for the US. Were these figures adjusted for risk, Narayana's outcomes would be even better. Narayana's hospital-acquired infection rate is 2.8% per 1,000 ICU days, which is comparable with the best hospitals in the world.

 
Challenging professional assumptions 
 
Like their UK NHS counterparts, Narayana's senior surgeons provide consultations for patients, lead operations, train surgeons and discharge patients. Unlike their UK counterparts, they're incentivised to spend more time in the operating room concentrating on what they do best - complex surgeries – while junior surgeons open and close surgical procedures and other health professionals attend patients in ICUs.
 
Typically, Narayana's surgeons work 60 to 70 hours a week, perform up to five operations a day and a third of their compensation is profit related. By contrast, UK's NHS consultant surgeons undertake between three to four procedures a week and their pay is based on 10 4-hour programmed activities a week and anything more is paid overtime. Unlike the NHS, Narayana has no rifts between clinicians and administrators; both are responsible for financial management. Every day, every doctor and every administrator receives a text message with the previous day's profit and loss statement.

Narayana's heart centre in Bangalore is a MECCA for western policy makers. All come away inspired but suggest that Narayana is an “Indian phenomenon”.

 
Takeaways
 
Perceiving Narayana Health as “Indian” fails to see the elephant in the room. In February 2014, Shetty opened a 140-bed hospital in the Cayman Islands as the first phase of a 2,000-bed Narayana Health City designed to capture share from the American healthcare market. "Our intention is not just to build a super specialty hospital; our intention is to build a hospital of the future," says Shetty.
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Gordon Moore
Professor of Population Medicine
 Harvard University  Medical School

'We must tap into the largest unused source of manpower: the patients themselves.'


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Meeting the challenges of affordable quality healthcare

Health care systems throughout the world are about to be hit by a tsunami.  Dramatically escalating GP demand is driven by the growth of life-style-related chronic illness, the surge of baby-boomers, a primary-care doctor shortage in some countries, and, in America, the surge of unmet needs now paid for by Obamacare. Either the current system will seize up, or new ways of caring for patients must be found.

Traditional responses unsustainable
Typically, healthcare systems respond to increased demand by adding manpower: usually nurses and other health workers. Increasing manpower reduces the potential for economies of scale in which increased volume reduces costs. Even worse, with additional workers added to a healthcare practice, efficiency actually decreases as downtime, communication costs, turnover, coverage, duplication and re-work increases. 

Healthcare systems must find a way to reduce the costs as they struggle to meet this surge of demand.  The old manpower-based responses, which at first seem attractive solutions, are unsustainable in the long run.

4 musts
What are the answers? 
  • First, we must tap into the largest unused source of manpower: the patients themselves.  Anyone who cares for patients with diabetes, smoking, or high blood pressure knows that the best plans of GPs often are not carried out despite many repeated visits to the doctor or nurse. 
  • Second, to activate patients, care support for them must be truly patient-centred.  Patients need help to gain confidence necessary to take control of their own therapeutic pathways. Such a system of support requires “having your doctor in your pocket”, which should be entertaining, engaging, educational, available 24/7, continuously helpful, personalized, and safe.
  • Third,having your doctor in your pocket,” can only be achieved if IT is used in new and innovative ways.  The most cost-effective avenue by which we can move patients with chronic illnesses to become more actively involved in their own care is through the Internet, where dramatic shifts in user interfaces, devices, and process interactions are taking place almost daily. By transferring expert knowledge to patients and thereby creating a truly patient-centred system, caring for ones’ own illness will be no more difficult than using a cash machine or mastering a smart phone.  
  • Finally, if the Internet can facilitate the transfer of knowledge from the medical system to the patient, then also it can facilitate the transfer of expert health knowledge to lower the cost of all clinical personnel from doctors to nurses to health coaches.  If guidelines, such as those produced by NICE in the UK, are built into the process of care that health professionals use, we would have developed a system that significantly extends the capacity of health professionals while maintaining the safety and quality aspects of care that increasingly people expect and demand.  An apt analogy is the way that today’s cockpit technology enables all pilots to be as good as the best.  Through the use of technology, we can do the same in medical care.
The past is no indication of the future
Today, healthcare is largely using IT to reproduce what doctors have done in the past. The electronic record is little different to paper records.  In the evolution of any new technology, its application development goes through this stage. However, we must put IT to use in doing new things, in innovation that reduces our dependence on expensive manpower and in producing more value for less money.

Making such a transition will not be easy or inexpensive.  But the costs of remaining the same and trying to meet escalating healthcare demands by adding more costly inputs are higher and more threatening in the long run.  We should be investing in the future, not tinkering with the present.  
 
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What does the nephew of the 41st American President and the cousin of the 43rd have in common with an Indian doctor?

They're both passionate about using new technologies to provide high quality healthcare at affordable cost.

Bush and Shetty
Jonathan Bush, a relative of two former American Presidents, is the co-author of Where Does it Hurt? which calls for a healthcare revolution to give patients more choices, and affordable quality care.

A former Army medic and ambulance driver, Bush is the cofounder and CEO of athenahealth, one of the fastest growing American cloud-based service companies, which handles electronic medical records, billing, and patient communications for more than 50,000 US health providers.

Dr Devi Shetty is a brilliant heart surgeon, and veteran of more than 30,000 operations. However, his growing international reputation rests less on his medical skill, and more on his business brain. He wants to do for healthcare what Henry Ford did for the motorcar: "make quality healthcare affordable."

Shetty is the founder and chairman of Narayana Health, and by thinking differently to traditional healthcare providers, he's built, India's largest private hospital group comprised of 23 hospitals in 14 Indian cities.
 
Shetty practices what Bush preaches
Bush suggests that the only way America will provide convenient quality healthcare at affordable cost, is if doctors do what they're trained to do, others perform routine services for less: for example, nurse-intensivists relieve surgeons from ICUs, and most importantly, if healthcare entrepreneurs are encouraged to tap into the transformative power of the marketplace.

For the past 15 years Shetty has been practicing what Bush is now preaching.  Narayana Health provides high quality healthcare, with compassion at affordable cost on a large scale. For instance in 2013, its 1,000-bed specialist heart hospital in Bangalore alone, performed a staggering 6,000 operations, half of them on children. By contrast, in the same year, Great Ormond Street Hospital in London performed less than 600.

In addition to hospitals, Shetty has developed a telemedicine practice, which reaches 100 facilities throughout India and more than 50 in Africa. Narayana Health is also India’s largest kidney-care provider. Shetty has started a micro-insurance program backed by the government that enables three million farmers to have health coverage for as little as US$2 in annual premiums. Over the next five years, Shetty plans to grow Narayana Health four times its present size and become a 30,000-bed hospital chain.
 
Healthcare change will come from developing nations
Bush says, the only way to build a flourishing health marketplace that everyone wants and can afford is for Americans to demand more from their health providers, and accept greater responsibility for their own health.

This will not happen, and Shetty explains why.
 
Shetty argues that the greatest advances in healthcare will not come from wealthy nations like the US and UK, but from developing nations. Rapidly changing technologies provide opportunities for developing nations to leapfrog wealthy nations, which are encumbered by entrenched and aging technologies.
 
Hospitals in developing countries with few advanced procedures can quickly leapfrog world-class hospitals such as those in the US and the UK, says Shetty. Instead of slowly replacing aging technologies, they can quickly implement innovative operational designs, and state-of-the-art technologies, which gives them a competitive advantage.  
 
Narayana Health City Cayman
This is what Shetty has done in the Cayman Islands. Backed by Ascension, the largest private health network in the US, and the Cayman government, which has designated a 200-acre site for the development of Narayana Health City Cayman.
 
 The first phase, which opened in February 2014, is a 104-bed tertiary hospital, which provides surgeries for less than half the average US price, with quality outcomes that match or exceed the very best US hospitals.  Narayana Health City Cayman is expected to develop into a 2000-5000-bed conglomeration of JCI accredited multiple super speciality hospitals in a single campus providing affordable healthcare to thousands.
 
Takeaway
Americans will have access to high quality healthcare at affordable cost, but it won’t happen in the way that Bush anticipates. Grand Cayman is only a 30minute flight from Miami.
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