Amitabh Kant just published an excellent book "Branding India - Incredible journey." India is a magnificently diverse country- with twenty-eight states, seven union territories, eighteen official languages and 1.12 billion people. In this complex and massive exercise, Amitabh Kant, former joint secretary in the ministry of tourism, and his colleagues cutting across various government departments achieved a global milestone as they put India on the World Tourism Map with their ‘Incredible India’ campaign.
Here is an excerpt highlighting my visit to India in 2007 as a guest speaker at the Indian Healthcare Summit in New Delhi:
"Paradigm Shift
In reality, there is a paradigm shift taking place and the primary healthcare doctors have only just begun to realize that there is a good quality treatment available outside the US. In these formative years, it will require professionals like Tom Keesling (founder and President of IndUShealth, USA) to act as a facilitator and catalyst. Keesling, whom I met at the Indian Health Summit in Delhi in 2007, told me that economics makes it a highly attractive option to send patients from the US to India. According to his calculation, the savings are of almost US$ 1000 per flying hour - almost US$30,000 for the thirty-hour return flying time from the US to India and back. According to him, the economics are obvious to chief financial officers (CFOs) but it is important to convince CEOs that the patients about the quality of healthcare in India being at par with the best in the US.
Keesling is recognized as a pioneer in making safe and affordable healthcare available to individuals and companies in the US. Speaking at the healthcare summit, Keesling said that more than incurring expenditure on promotion and marketing, it is essential that Indian hospitals have independent studies on medical outcomes of patients and get them regularly published in international journals to establish that they can match the world's best - Mayo and Johns Hopkins. The approach has to be similar to that of Indian hotels, which figure prominently amongst the finest in the world. Indian hospitals like Max, Escorts, Apollo and Wockhardt and Artemis (a phenomenal new hospital in Gurgaon) need to figure in the list of the best hospitals in terms of their medical performance. This will give them enhanced credibility for referral purposes. Dr Naresh Trehan, who has aggressively driven the Indian Helath Care Foundation, aims to achieve this excellence through the establishment of his Medicity in Gurgaon."
The conference that Amitabh references featured a surprise visit by His Holiness Dalai Lama that occurred just before my presentation. His quote, "...less prayer, less meditation...more actions!" has certainly been echoed in our efforts to introduce the outstanding advantages of Indian healthcare to American patients and corporations.
As I think back to the seemingly random path from Indiana, to reading the Bhagavad Gita during my study of Eastern philosophy in college, to the ten years of hospital CEO experience...and yet another chapter of healthcare reform... I find myself referring to one of my favorite quotes from Rajesh Rao, co-founder of IndUShealth,
"there is no such thing as luck, only destiny"
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