ASSIGNMENT: HCCI

Ans 1: The Narayana Health, also known as Narayana Hrudayalaya, was a very successful

hospital located in Bangalore which provides affordable and high-quality health care services

to people having low-income in India. The success of NH lies in the hands of Dr. Devi Shetty

who used his surgical skills to serve the poor. The average cost of open-heart surgery at NH is

less than $2000 but the same procedure costs around $1,00,000 in any U.S. research hospital.

Also, people are employed at higher rates as compared to other hospitals in India, but they tend

to work longer hours and are capable of doing multiple tasks, for example, the nurses performed

the duties of respiratory therapists which led to reduced staff members and better care quality

as fewer staff touched patients. They re-utilize expensive medical devices after strict

sterilization procedures in order to cut the overall operational costs. NH also developed a suite

of services like assistance with the visa process, airport pick-up and drop-off, local

accommodations and other needs for the patient’s relatives to cater to the International patients

as well, during their stay in Bangalore. There was a time where there were not even 20 cardiac

surgeries in a year but today, 14 surgeons at NH, Bangalore could do 25-30 cardiac surgeries

each day, however, increasing the overall efficiency. NH also worked with ISRO to manage

the World’s largest tele-medicine program and treated over 50,000 patients in India.

Ans 2: The focus of HCCI is to expand services and reduce further costs, with the aim of

providing CABG surgery for $1500. The important aspect of NH model that is relevant for US

is its focus on finding efficiencies in every aspect of operations and putting the savings to work
in order to increase affordability for patients. The Cayman government sensed that HCCI

would improve the access to healthcare for not only the Caymanians but also for the 38 million

inhabitants of the Caribbean. The HCCI staff would allow youth to identify role models and

avail of the HCCI medical college facilities to pursue careers in medical and healthcare. HCCI

will have to implement all the infrastructure amendments that were made in India to be able to

be successful in the US as well.

Ans 3: Health care in the US is costly and accounts for nearly 17% of the GDP, which is

significantly higher than other developed countries. As there is low scope of increasing the

prices of HCCI different procedure after the agreement with insurance companies, hence, they

should keep relatively higher profit margins than what NH keeps on its CABG

(Coronary Artery Bypass Graft) pricing. The reason behind this is that the Cayman

Government is highly supportive of this initiative and also recognised the degree of Indian

doctors and healthcare professionals which means they can also work in HCCI organizations

and other hospitals in the Cayman Islands. Therefore, it is recommended that HCCI rates

should be much higher than NH rates but much less than what the US government offers when

its citizen usually goes for any treatment. For the economically weaker sections of its Cayman

Islands, HCCI can make use of a quota system where a certain amount of every procedure will

be provided at subsidized rates to the poor citizens of that area.