Devi Shetty's Health Insurance Push

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00:00 Shetty is really a brand himself. One of India's leading cardiac surgeons and the

00:04 founder of Narayana Health. Dr. Shetty, thank you for joining us today on NDTV.

00:08 Narayana Health is so well known, it's such an established brand but

00:14 there's a bit of rebranding planned. Why is this? We are constantly rebranding

00:20 ourselves. We started off as a single specialty heart hospital and evolved

00:27 into a multi specialty, multi super specialty, multi city hospital. Now we

00:34 are outside India as well. So it is an evolution just to service the needs of

00:39 the society and especially India. Did you expect it to grow as much as it did

00:44 when you started this all those years ago? If I say I knew it will happen, I

00:49 know I'm lying. I never anticipated but we knew that we will make a difference

00:55 to large number of people and we are lucky. How much of a role will

01:02 preventive medicine happen in the new avatar, in the new version of NH? What

01:07 kind of stress will be given to that? Our whole idea is that we are very clear

01:13 that we are not in the business of building hospitals and managing

01:19 hospitals. We want to take care of people's wellness and health. So we want

01:25 to be a dominant player in primary care. We want to create large number of

01:31 clinics to reach out to people. Smaller clinics everywhere. Yes, yes, everywhere. So that we

01:36 will be the point of call for everyone 24/7 wherever they are. They may be at

01:43 home, they may be in the car, they may be in the office. We want to be available. We

01:48 want to become a consumer-centric health care organization wherein we take care

01:52 of the primary care, secondary care, tertiary care and over and above that we

01:58 would also like to become if possible a health insurance company and so that we

02:05 address the basic need of health care in India that is paying for the health care.

02:11 I mean insurance, health insurance has always been a passion of yours years ago

02:15 of course with Yashaswini as well. Is there a lot of growth needed for the health

02:20 insurance sector in India especially for poorer families? See, thanks to the

02:25 government's intervention they have reformed IRDA. It has become a great

02:29 organization with the wonderful foresight. They realized that the only

02:35 hope for India's health care is a health insurance company which offers health

02:41 care to the poor, middle class and the rich people and as you know I tried 17

02:49 years ago to get into health insurance. At that time no regulatory body will

02:55 even talk to us but now things have changed. Now IRDA is the most progressive

03:02 organization which is really coming out of the way to help and hopefully we will

03:07 get the license to start the health insurance and we will start it soon. Our

03:11 whole idea is that people who are not eligible for health insurance we want to

03:18 offer them the health insurance. The dream is that in the near future when a

03:25 doctor talks to the patient about the disease and the treatment the discussion

03:31 should not be about the money. Discussion should be only about the treatment

03:37 outcome, quality of life, longevity, what can be done, what cannot be done. Not

03:43 about how much it costs. It is very very frustrating for doctors like us when the

03:49 discussion is around the money and especially when the patient chooses a

03:54 alternative form of treatment because he cannot afford the expensive treatment.

03:59 And the final dream is that hospitals in India should have no cash

04:05 counter. The entire transaction should happen between the insurance company and

04:11 the hospital and patient is nowhere in the picture. That is really a huge dream

04:17 because so many families are crippled by medical costs or they avoid medical

04:21 treatment because of this. But how does it work because hospitals salaries need

04:26 to be paid, you have your equipment. How do you make it work to make it a

04:29 business which doesn't hurt the poor? Our greatest strength is our people. We

04:37 are a country of 1.4 billion people and if we run a health insurance, if there is

04:46 one country where health insurance will be viable and the health care

04:50 institution will be thriving that is India because of the volume of population.

04:54 I'll give you one example. We have let's assume that 100 million people who

05:02 cannot afford very expensive health insurance they can pay say 10,000 rupees

05:08 per year to cover the entire family for the primary, secondary and tertiary care

05:13 with a good coverage. 100 million families pay just 10,000 rupees per year.

05:22 We will be able to collect one lakh crore rupees which is more than the

05:27 central government's health care budget for the whole country and that is the

05:32 magic. It is all about economy of scale. In India today there are 100

05:39 million families who can afford to pay any amount of money for the health

05:44 insurance. So you can cover 100 million families. Another 100 million families

05:50 work for the first 100 million families and the wealthy 100 million family pay

05:57 10,000 or 5,000 rupees to the people who work for them for their health insurance.

06:01 We would have covered the health care cost of 200 million

06:09 families and other leftover whatever 100 million families, government is doing a

06:14 great job in taking care they will continue to do it. So I believe that

06:20 India will become the first country in the world to dissociate health care from

06:26 affluence and it's not going to take lifetime it is going to happen in next

06:32 five years. Whatever transformation you have seen in digital infrastructure and

06:39 all this FinTech revolution what you have seen same thing is going to happen

06:44 with health care. That's a really wonderful dream of patients don't have

06:49 to think about money but to think about the treatment like you said. Now often

06:54 for patients when they come in they are bewildered by the medical jargon by what

06:57 is being done. Are there going to be attempts in the new avatar again to make

07:02 things more comprehensible for the patient to keep them informed about what

07:06 happens? See we have invested heavily last 20 years we have made a huge

07:13 investment on building the digital platform. We have virtually becoming a

07:19 paperless and smart hospital and all the communication between the today a

07:24 patient can come to our hospital without talking to anybody they can register

07:29 they can pay and they are told what time to see the doctors and the doctors will

07:34 see them they go from one specialist to the other specialist without having any

07:38 paper everything comes to their phone. So every patient who comes to us they have

07:44 their entire medical records in their phone. This is what is the digital

07:50 transformation. Two o'clock at night if the patient develops stomach ache or a

07:55 headache or they are restless all they need to do is to contact us in our

08:02 number and when our nurse receives the call she has the total knowledge about

08:07 which patient is it what investigation has been done entire history of the

08:11 patient without even talking to a patient a single word and that is the

08:18 beauty of technology what it can do. Absolutely so the patient is not running

08:22 around with files and x-rays and scans the doctor or the nurse has the

08:26 information it's all there. And every time you see a new doctor he won't ask

08:31 you what is your family history what you're allergic to you know how many

08:36 children you have everything is recorded. The past medical history never changes

08:42 your family history never changes right the the the old medical history never

08:47 changes everything once it is recorded it is pointless keep asking the same

08:52 thing over and over and by doing this you will virtually eliminate the medical

08:58 error. There's no human error entering data there's no no readings are there

09:04 constantly available whatever the parameters are it's right there. Yes yes

09:08 yes and this is really a dream then because to get quality health care at

09:14 affordable costs to every Indian really. India will prove to the world that the

09:21 wealth of the nation wealth of the family has nothing to do with the

09:28 quality of health care its citizens can enjoy. Because we've talked about

09:33 digitalization the digital divide has been real it need not be there

09:36 economically for health then if your dream comes true. Yes that is the whole

09:40 idea the whole idea is that how easily you get the service in terms of mobile

09:48 communication how well the entertainment industry runs today people can watch any

09:55 movie in their mobile phone same thing same experience they will have in

10:01 health care. When you you don't shudder thinking about going to a hospital

10:07 you don't need to go to the hospital maybe once a year you go to the hospital

10:12 get your preventive checkup done that to the entire preventive checkup can be

10:16 done within 90 minutes you don't need to spend whole day in the hospital

10:21 everything will change. Greater focus on care at home as well. You see the

10:30 exactly the ultimately when you look at a hospital today when you say a hospital

10:38 you assume that 90% of the beds are ward and room beds 90 10% are critical care

10:47 beds in the near future ward and room beds are going to disappear whatever you

10:53 are going to do to the patient in the ward or the room of the hospital you

10:58 will be doing it at home when you say a hospital hospital will consist mainly of

11:04 critical care services and all these diagnostic facilities. And back to the

11:11 rebranding what is the difference we can expect to see physically in terms of the

11:15 look. We just want patients to come out of the fear of accessing health care and

11:23 we want to be available to them 24/7 wherever they are whenever they want and

11:30 they don't need to plan for going to see the doctor they have to just send us a

11:35 message and our doctors will be there available to them online. We want

11:40 patients to enjoy the experience of health care rather than looking it as

11:45 something which they don't want but they have no choice. Wonderful thank you so

11:51 much thank you very much. Patients enjoying the experience of health care

11:56 not worrying about the cost of it and accessing world-class care that is a

12:01 dream of Dr. Shetty and his team and I'm sure he'll make it come true. With

12:06 Govind Murthy, Maya Sharma in Bengaluru for NDTV.

12:11 you

12:13 (upbeat music)

12:15 (typewriter clacking)

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