ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA – During a recent appearance with Caribbean broadcaster Julian Rogers on Rogers Radio Caribbean in Antigua and Barbuda, Shomari Scott, marketing director for Health City Cayman Islands in Grand Cayman, reported the new healthcare facility is responding to the call of the late Mother Teresa to “change the world” in our lifetime.
Speaking on Rogers’ new morning show, Scott explained that the state-of-the-art hospital was founded by Dr. Devi Shetty, who was Mother Teresa’s physician and who the Wall Street Journal calls the “Henry Ford of Healthcare”.
The late nun was deeply saddened and troubled by the lack of access the poor had to quality healthcare.
The pioneering Dr. Shetty, who was inspired by Mother Teresa’s compassionate ways, is responsible for establishing a sophisticated network of 26 hospitals throughout India.
Health City Cayman Islands brings to life Dr. Shetty’s vision of ensuring that high-quality, affordable healthcare is available to all in need, especially those who may not be able to afford such care.
By improving efficiencies and employing highly trained doctors working with the latest technology, Dr. Shetty’s skilled teams are able to provide advanced technical surgeries at a fraction of the cost in the United States.
The medical teams were able to effect significant savings, so, whereas heart surgery can be more than USD $100,000 in the United States, they were able to successfully operate at the same level, and often better, on patients for a fraction of that cost, Scott told Rogers Radio Caribbean listeners.
Scott asserted that commercial rates for a heart bypass surgery in the United States could start at about $70,000 but Dr. Shetty’s hospitals were able to deliver the same, or better outcomes, than a patient could expect from any first-rate institution in the world for as low as $1,400 in India. At Health City Cayman Islands a similar surgery can be performed for at least 50 percent lower than US commercial rates.
With the success of his hospitals in India, Dr. Shetty sought next to establish a high-end hospital in the western hemisphere to prove that even in the west, with the right technology and efficiencies, it was possible to bring down the cost of these highly complex surgical procedures.
Scott, a former director of tourism in the Cayman Islands, said Dr. Shetty believed that regardless of the industry, the more you innovate and make efficiencies the more the prices come down. He pointed to the cost of a tablet today versus what it would sell for a few years ago.
Dr. Shetty questioned the long-held status quo of modern western medicine in which greater innovation seemingly results in higher prices.
Pointing to the amount of surgeries carried out by Dr. Shetty’s teams at no cost to the patients, Scott said Dr. Shetty’s hospitals “provide (the most) pediatric heart surgeries in the world in any given year free of cost to the families.”
This year, several Haitian children and a Jamaican woman have benefited from similar free, life-saving heart surgery at Health City Cayman Islands.
