Devi Prasad Shetty FRCS (born 8 May 1953) is an Indian entrepreneur and cardiac surgeon who is the chairman and founder of Narayana Health, a chain of 21 medical centers in India. He has performed more than 16,000 heart operations. In 2004 he was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award, followed by the Padma Bhushan in 2012, the third highest civilian award by the

Government of India The Government of India ( ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

for his contribution to the field of affordable healthcare. There is an episode about his life and work on the Netflix TV series ''

The Surgeon's Cut ''The Surgeon's Cut'' is a 2020 docuseries starring Lin Gallagher. Cast * Lin Gallagher Episodes Release ''The Surgeon's Cut'' was released on December 9, 2020, on Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand ov ...

'' (episode 4).

Early life and education

Shetty was born in Kinnigoli, a village in the

Dakshina Kannada Dakshina Kannada district is a district of Karnataka state in India, with its headquarters in the coastal city of Mangalore. It is part of the larger Tulu Nadu region. The district covers an area nestled in between the Western Ghats to its east ...

district,

Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Kar ...

, India. The eighth of nine children, he decided to become a heart surgeon when he was a school student after hearing about Christiaan Barnard, a South African surgeon who had just performed the world's first heart transplant. He was educated a
St. Aloysius School, Mangaluru
He completed his MBBS in 1979, and post-graduate work in General Surgery from Kasturba Medical College,

Mangalore Mangalore (), officially known as Mangaluru, is a major port city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats about west of Bangalore, the state capital, 20 km north of Karnataka– ...

. Later he completed FRCS from Royal College of Surgeons, England.

Career

He returned to India in 1989 and initially worked at B.M. Birla Hospital in

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

. He successfully performed the first neonatal heart surgery in the country in 1992, on a 21-day-old baby Ronnie. In

he operated on Mother Teresa after she had a heart attack, and subsequently served as her personal physician. After some time, he moved to

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

and started the Manipal Heart Foundation at Manipal Hospitals,

. Financial contribution for the construction of the hospital was provided by Shetty's father-in-law. In 2001, Shetty founded Narayana Hrudayalaya (NH), a multi-specialty hospital in Bommasandra on the outskirts of Bangalore. He believes that the cost of healthcare can be reduced by 50 percent in the next 5–10 years if hospitals adopt the idea of economies of scale. Apart from

cardiac surgery Cardiac surgery, or cardiovascular surgery, is surgery on the heart or great vessels performed by cardiac surgeons. It is often used to treat complications of ischemic heart disease (for example, with coronary artery bypass grafting); to ...

, NH also has

cardiology Cardiology () is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the heart and the cardiovascular system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular he ...

neurosurgery Neurosurgery or neurological surgery, known in common parlance as brain surgery, is the medical specialty concerned with the surgical treatment of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord and ...

paediatric surgery Pediatric surgery is a subspecialty of surgery involving the surgery of fetuses, infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. History Pediatric surgery arose in the middle of the 1879 century as the surgical care of birth defects requ ...

haematology Hematology ( always spelled haematology in British English) is the branch of medicine concerned with the study of the cause, prognosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases related to blood. It involves treating diseases that affect the produc ...

and

transplant Transplant or Transplantation may refer to: Sciences *Transplanting a plant from one location to another *Organ transplantation, moving an organ from one body to another *Transplant thought experiment, an experiment similar to Trolley problem *Tra ...

services, and

nephrology Nephrology (from Greek'' nephros'' "kidney", combined with the suffix ''-logy'', "the study of") is a specialty of adult internal medicine and pediatric medicine that concerns the study of the kidneys, specifically normal kidney function (r ...

among various others. The heart hospital is the largest in the world with 1000 beds performing over 30 major heart surgeries a day. The land on which the health city was built, was previously a marshland which was reclaimed for this purpose. The Health City intends to cater to about 15,000 outpatients every day. In August 2012 Shetty announced an agreement with TriMedx, a subsidiary of Ascension Health, to create a joint venture for a chain of hospitals in India. In the past Narayana Hrudayalaya has collaborated with Ascension Health to set up a health care city in the Cayman Islands, planned to eventually have 2,000 beds. Shetty also founded Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences (RTIICS) in Kolkata, and signed a memorandum of understanding with the Karnataka Government to build 5,000-bed specialty hospital near Bangalore International Airport. His company signed a MOU with the

Government of Gujarat The Government of Gujarat, also known as Gujarat Government, is the supreme governing authority of the Indian state of Gujarat and its 33 districts. It consists of an executive of the legislators appointed by the Governor of Gujarat, a judiciar ...

, to set up a 5,000-bed hospital at Ahmedabad. He was a part of the seven-member panel of Board of Governors which replaced the MCI and served for a period of one year before it was further reconstituted.

Low cost health care

Shetty aims for his hospitals to use

economies of scale In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables a ...

, to allow them to complete heart surgeries at a lower cost than in the United States. In 2009 ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' newspaper described him as "the

Henry Ford Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American Technological and industrial history of the United States, industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of ...

of heart surgery". Six additional hospitals were subsequently planned on the Narayana Hrudayalaya model at several cities in India, with plans to expand to 30,000 beds with hospitals in India, Africa and other countries in Asia. Shetty aims to trim costs with such measures as buying cheaper scrubs and using cross ventilation instead of

air conditioning Air conditioning, often abbreviated as A/C or AC, is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior environment (sometimes referred to as 'comfort cooling') and in some cases also strictly controlling ...

. That has cut the price of

coronary bypass surgery Coronary artery bypass surgery, also known as coronary artery bypass graft (CABG, pronounced "cabbage") is a surgical procedure to treat coronary artery disease (CAD), the buildup of plaques in the arteries of the heart. It can relieve chest pai ...

to 95,000 rupees ($1,583), half of what it was 20 years ago. In 2013 he aimed to get the price down to $800 within a decade. The same procedure costs $106,385 at Ohio's

Cleveland Clinic Cleveland Clinic is a nonprofit American academic medical center based in Cleveland, Ohio. Owned and operated by the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, an Ohio nonprofit corporation established in 1921, it runs a 170-acre (69 ha) campus in Cleveland, ...

. He has also eliminated many pre-ops testing and innovated in patient care such as "drafting and training patients' family members to administer after-surgical care". Surgeons in his hospitals perform 30 to 35 surgeries a day compared to one or two in a US hospital. His hospitals also provide substantial free care especially for poor children. Whereas urban India calls him "Henry Ford" for his assembly line approach to heart surgeries, rural Indians calls him "Bypasswale Baba" as attested by thousands of sources such as the Deccan Herald, the English newspaper with the largest circulation in Karnataka, Shetty's home state. This is because, like a saint (or Rishi in Indian mythology), anybody who comes to Devi Shetty's Ashram/hospital gets a bypass if he or she dreams of it. Shetty and his family have a 75 percent stake in Narayana Hridayalaya which he plans to preserve. Shetty has also pioneered low-cost diagnostic services. He was appointed as chairman of the COVID-19 task force in Karnataka which was criticised by global health doctors as being a cardiac surgeon, he did not have the epidemiological approach to COVID-19 management.

Yeshasvini

Yeshasvini is a low-cost health insurance scheme, designed by Shetty and the

Government of Karnataka The Government of Karnataka, abbreviated as, GoK, or simply Karnataka Government, is a democratically-elected state body with the governor as the ceremonial head to govern the Southwest Indian state of Karnataka. The governor who is appointed ...

for the poor farmers of the state, with 4 million people currently covered. Aortic type b dissection is not covered in the scheme.

Awards and recognition

* Padma Bhushan award for Medicine in 2012 * Karnataka Ratna award in 2001 *Entrepreneur of the Year at ET awards in 2012 *Won the 2011

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econ ...

Innovation Awards for the ''Business process'' field. *Honorary degree,

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

in 2011 *Honorary degree, ‘Honoris Causa’ Degree of ‘Doctor of Science’ by

Indian Institute of Technology Madras Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) is a public technical university located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. As one of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), it is recognized as an Institute of National Importance and has ...

in 2014 * Schwab Foundation's award in 2005 * Padma Shri award for Medicine in 2004 * Dr. B C Roy award in 2003 *Sir M. Visvesvaraya Memorial Award in 2003 *

Ernst & Young Ernst & Young Global Limited, trade name EY, is a multinational corporation, multinational professional services partnership headquartered in London, England. EY is one of the largest professional services networks in the world. Along with Delo ...

– Entrepreneur Of The Year – Life Sciences in 2012 *

– Entrepreneur of the Year – Start-up in 2003 *Rajyotsava award in 2002 *Indian Of The Year (Public Sector) by

CNN-IBN CNN-News18 (originally CNN-IBN) is an Indian English-language news television channel founded by Raghav Bahl based in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. It is currently co-owned by Network18 Group and Warner Bros. Discovery. CNN provides interna ...

for 2012

Television

Shetty stars in the fourth (and last) episode of

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...

's docuseries ''The Surgeon's Cut'', which was released globally on 9 December 2020. The episode follows Shetty's treatment of patients, mostly children and babies, prioritizing low-cost and affordable healthcare while performing with his team more than thirty surgeries a day.BBC New
"The Surgeon's Cut"
/ref>

References

External links

Profile - Devi Prasad Shetty
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shetty, Devi Prasad Indian cardiac surgeons Indian philanthropists Medical doctors from Bangalore Mangaloreans Tulu people 1953 births Living people Recipients of the Padma Shri in medicine Recipients of the Karnataka Ratna Manipal Academy of Higher Education alumni Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in medicine 20th-century Indian medical doctors Scientists from Mangalore Physicians of Guy's Hospital Winners of the Nikkei Asia Prize 20th-century surgeons