Dr. Devi Shetty’s Health City Envisions a New Kind of Medical Tourism
by Cheryl Haas
Devi Shetty, MD, is out to change the world of health care delivery through compassion, quality, and affordability. India’s most renowned heart surgeon and Chairman of Narayana Health has built a chain of 21 medical centers that cut costs so substantially that they can provide clinical excellence at a fraction of the price and with outcomes that are as good as or better than premier American facilities.
Narayana partnered with U.S.-based Ascension Health to open a 104-bed hospital in the Grand Cayman Islands, just a short plane ride from Miami, in February 2014. The state-of-the-art tertiary care hospital specializes in heart surgery, cardiology, orthopedics, pulmonology, and pediatric endocrinology. Future plans for the Health City Cayman Islands facility include expansion to 2,000 beds over the next 10 years and an international medical school.
With both elective and necessary procedures priced at least 50 percent lower than in the United States, Dr. Shetty hopes to appeal to Americans who are uninsured or need surgery not covered by insurance. While quality care is available in medical tourism destinations such as Thailand or India, many would-be medical tourists balk at the idea of post-operative recovery so far from home, in an unfamiliar culture.