Striking A Healthy Balance

For years, Narayana Hrudayalaya was synonymous with cardiac care. Over the years, it has added cancer care, neurology, orthopaedics, and nephrology to its services. But one thing remains the same: It still provides high quality, affordable healthcare to the masses.

- Deepti Chaudhary

REQUESTS FROM PATIENTS and their families to see Raghuvanshi, the vice chairman, managing director and group CEO of Bengaluru-based Narayana Hrudayalaya Ltd—No. 462 on the Fortune India 500 list this year—are not uncommon. That the 56-year-old executive has a personal rule of never turning down a patient’s request to see him also often works in their favour.

The three members who walked into his sparse office a minute later included an 18-year-old who Raghuvanshi had first operated on in 2001, when she was a year old. She had a complicated heart condition which needed three surgeries over 15 years. The family managed to partly pay the expenses of the first surgery, but hit a dead-end for the second and third surgeries in 2007 and 2015 as the father, who was a primary school teacher, had lost his job. On Raghuvanshi’s reference, Narayana Hrudayalaya’s foundation chipped in and the surgeries were done at almost zero cost.

On November 6, the family had come for a final checkup and asked if she could work at the hospital to extend her gratitude. “This is what we live for, it’s so fulfilling,” says Raghuvanshi, who joined the hospital chain in 1997 as a senior cardiac surgeon. He is referring to the philosophy the hospital chain stands for—to provide high quality, affordable healthcare to the masses so that no patient is turned down from a medical procedure for lack of money. “The economic demographics are not changing at the same rate at which people require healthcare,” he says, stressing that the onus is on organised players to make healthcare affordable for all as they can negotiate better rates with medical consumables and insurance companies.