Nurturing Hearts

Narayana Health focuses on providing affordable medical care to the poor while keeping its operating costs under control

- Anshul Dhamija

It was by sheer accident that Ashutosh Raghuvanshi got enrolled in Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Maharashtra, for his MBBS degree in 1980. The institute, which also runs a hospital, is India’s first rural medical institution with a focus on providing affordable health care to the masses. During the time Raghuvanshi was a student there, the institute ran a barter system: It gave free medical access to poor farmers in return for grains.

“The institute, along with All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi, had a common entrance exam back then. Frankly, I didn’t get into AIIMS (due to poor scores),” recalls Raghuvanshi. “Farmers needed to give a little bit of jowar (sorghum) which was a premium that covered medical care for all kinds of illnesses.” The bartered grain, which the institute sold in the open market, was just a nominal fee for access to quality medical care for poor farmers.

It’s the same ethos—of reaching out to the masses—that continues to drive Raghuvanshi, who went on to earn his stripes as a cardiac surgeon with a focus on paediatric cardiac care.

Today, Dr Raghuvanshi isn’t a practising clinician but the vice chairman, group CEO and managing director of Bengalurubased Narayana Hrudayalaya Ltd (NHL). It operates a network of 22 hospitals and seven heart centres, totalling over 6,100 beds across India under the Narayana Health (NH) brand. NHL also has a 110-bed hospital in Cayman Islands, a British territory in the Caribbean region.