In an opinion piece published by The Washington Post, Vijay Govindarajan of the Tuck School of Business says cutting costs while improving the quality of health care is the biggest challenge facing health care in the U.S.
Toward that end, a few innovative hospitals in India may serve as a guide, writes Govindarajan, the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at Tuck.
“India’s health care system as a whole has many problems, but our research has uncovered nine private hospitals that provide quality health care at a fraction of U.S. prices,” he writes.
How do the Indian hospitals do this? “They have innovated in three areas,” Govindarajan writes “and for each of these, U.S. hospitals would do well to follow their examples.”
The hospitals use a “hub-and-spoke design, with hub hospitals located in major cities and spoke hospitals in rural areas,” he says. Also, the hospitals use an innovative approach to task shifting and save money through “old-fashioned frugality.”
Read the full opinion piece, published 11/1/13 by The Washington Post.