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In India, 'no frills' hospitals offer $800 heart surgery

globalpost.com

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Re: In India, 'no frills' hospitals offer $800 heart surgery

#51
post #49
post #44

Isn't India one of the top countries for surprise kidney removal? General link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_trade#Illegal_organ_trade

That's irrelevant to the topic at hand.

The insinuation is that this hospital is scammy in some way, perhaps covering its costs by harvesting organs.

I somewhat understand where that skepticism comes from, as scam operations in developing countries are not unheard of.

That said, this would seem to be a big enough operation to not be going down that route, and to be fair, these organ stealing operations are far less common than we fear them to be. Just a bit of paranoia floating around.

I'd be far more worried that this operation is taking risks with patient care (in-op and post-op) in its cost cutting. I'd think it much more likely that you walk away from a low-cost hospital with an infection than missing an organ.

Re: In India, 'no frills' hospitals offer $800 heart surgery

#52
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, but the majority of new US medicine is just modified versions of old substances.

Once the old substances patent expires, any drug company can produce generics. There is no incentive to ignore patents and produce generics if the patent is expired because other companies will likely be producing generics, assuming there is actually a market for the drug.

> Once the old substances patent expires, any drug company can produce generics.

Except for when the company makes a tiny modification to the drug that doesn't change its effectiveness and files for a renewed patent, like in the Novartis suit that India's Supreme Court recently (and rightfully) rejected.

Re: In India, 'no frills' hospitals offer $800 heart surgery

#53
post #44

Isn't India one of the top countries for surprise kidney removal? General link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_trade#Illegal_organ_trade

> Payment for…organs is likely to take unfair advantage of the poorest and most vulnerable groups, undermines altruistic donation and leads to profiteering and human trafficking.

That is probably the reason India is ranked high. No "surprise kidney removals". It is usually the rich (and sometimes people from the west) that can not get a transplant legally in their countries opt to buy their way out of it in more lax countries.

Re: In India, 'no frills' hospitals offer $800 heart surgery

#55
post #47

[deleted]

Why do you so handily dismiss the article without addressing its content? He is bringing 'expensive' care to people who would otherwise be ignored and making more money to boot. He is doing this by being more efficient, distributed, modular, small and optimizing details right down to architecture and construction. In a world where a large chunk still die from trivial diseases, it is clear current methods do not scale. If this model can safely serve more people, more cheaply and is more profitable then it surely is worth trying. Our current approach to healthcare certainly could do with more efficiency. He states in the article that charity does not scale, even if that is the case, a more efficient healthcare system also improves the efficiency of charity by multiplying how far each unit of currency goes. Is that not what HN is about?

There is probably an Amdahl's Law style limit to this approach where certain expensive specialty care does not benefit from this type of parallelization. But much of the world is not healthy enough to have those as major concerns. Separation may be useful there too, perhaps prices for many treatments are inflated from too much coupling of services? We won't know without experimenting.

As for your link, I believe this is exacerbated by combining highly sterilized environments with sloppy practices. If people are in and out as quick as possible, and only key areas are kept highly sterile this may actually be a bonus. More practice from high throughput aslo drills checklists. A quick google suggests 2% mortality rate and 3% H-aI. Even if padded, looking at his stats - 15,000 surgeries performed and operating since 2001; if it were really so bad I suspect complaints would be much more forceful and he would not be so profitable. Being profit motivated and no frills gives incentives to pay attention to waste, errors and quicker reaction time in dealing with those.

Re: In India, 'no frills' hospitals offer $800 heart surgery

#56
post #47

[deleted]

Narayana Hrudayalaya has some of the best post-operation recovery numbers comparable or better than your first world hospitals.

> The hospital enjoys a high success rate - an average 1.4% mortality rate within 30 days of coronary artery bypass graft surgery, compared to 1.9% in the U.S.

http://healthmarketinnovations.org/program/narayana-hrudayal...

Re: In India, 'no frills' hospitals offer $800 heart surgery

#57
post #55
post #47

[deleted]

Why do you so handily dismiss the article without addressing its content? He is bringing 'expensive' care to people who would otherwise be ignored and making more money to boot. He is doing this by being more efficient, distributed, modular, small and optimizing details right down to architecture and construction. In a world where a large chunk still die from trivial diseases, it is clear current methods do not scale…

[deleted]

Re: In India, 'no frills' hospitals offer $800 heart surgery

#58
post #56
post #47

[deleted]

Narayana Hrudayalaya has some of the best post-operation recovery numbers comparable or better than your first world hospitals. > The hospital enjoys a high success rate - an average 1.4% mortality rate within 30 days of coronary artery bypass graft surgery, compared to 1.9% in the U.S. http://healthmarketinnovations.org/program/narayana-hrudayal...

Who audits the numbers for the hospital? Is it all self-reported?

Re: In India, 'no frills' hospitals offer $800 heart surgery

#60
post #29
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with the ambulance chasing lawyers in the US. Also, India's drugs are cheaper.

Of course their drugs are cheaper, if drugs companies won't sell to them at huge discounts, India ignores the patents and produces the drugs themselves. Consequently, the US subsidizes their drugs, insofar as they do not contribute to the costs of R&D, including research and clinical trials for working and failed drugs. If every country adopts that policy, which is the direction things are headed because it's the dom…

If every country adopts that policy, which is the direction things are headed because it's the dominant strategy, the rate of medical advancement will be much lower.

What's the use of medical advancement that can't help more than 10% of humanity?

It's far more important that we move to a world in which all human beings have access to basic sanitation and healthcare than it is to spend billions of dollars attacking statistically rare diseases producing medicines that will help only a few rich people.

In fact, I'd go one step further and argue that your statement is actually false in the long term. A world where all humans have access to good healthcare and education would actually be a world in which more people contribute to research and development of new drugs and one in which knowledge would advance faster.

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