Devi Shetty

Devi Prasad Shetty (born 8 May 1953) is an Indian cardiac surgeon who is the chairman and founder of Narayana Health, a chain of 24 medical centers in India. 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 for his contribution to the field of affordable healthcare.

Early life and education Shetty was born at Kinnigoli, a village in Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka in a Tulu speaking Bunt family . He was the eighth among nine children of his parents. 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.

Shetty was educated at St. Aloysius High School in Mangalore. Thereafter, he completed his MBBS in 1979 and postgraduation in General Surgery from Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore. Later, he completed FRCS from Royal College of Surgeons, England. He has also received an advanced cardiothoracic surgery training at Guy's Hospital in London.

Career He returned to India in 1989 and initially worked at B.M. Birla Hospital in Kolkata. He successfully performed the first neonatal heart surgery in the country in 1992, on a 21-day-old baby Ronnie. In Kolkata he operated on Mother Teresa after she had a heart attack, and subsequently served as her personal physician.

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 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, to set up a 5,000-bed hospital at Ahmedabad.

Low cost health care Shetty aims for his hospitals to use economies of scale, to allow them to complete heart surgeries at a lower cost than in the United States. In 2009 The Wall Street Journal newspaper described him as "the Henry Ford 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. 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. 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. Dr. Devi Shetty, Founder, Narayana Hrudalaya with Dr. Edmond Fernandes, Founder, CHD Group Shetty and his family have a 75 percent stake in Narayana Hrudayalaya 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 criticized 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 for the poor farmers of the state, with 4 million people currently covered. Karnataka Ratna Award, in 2001 Entrepreneur of the Year at ET awards, in 2012 Honorary degree, University of Minnesota, in 2011 Honorary degree, 'Honoris Causa' Degree of 'Doctor of Science' by Indian Institute of Technology Madras, in 2014 Schwab Foundation 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, Entrepreneur Of The Year – Life Sciences, in 2012 Ernst & Young, Entrepreneur of the Year – Start-up, in 2003 Indian Of The Year (Public Sector) by CNN-IBN, in 2012

Television Shetty stars in the fourth (and last) episode of Netflix'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.