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How the Rest of the World Does It: New Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital

I visited Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi today – an institution with  1,531 beds and 145% occupancy rate.  Yes, 145%.  You do the math.  A lot of bed sharing and asking families to bring in cots.  It’s right across the street from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the premier public healthcare institution in India.  While both AIIMS and Safdarjung are run by the federal government, only AIIMS is renowned for famous specialists, world class facilities, and an international reputation to boot.  Safdarjung doesn’t suffer such burdens – its specialists are not well known, facilities are dilapidated, and you probably have never heard of it.

I spent several hours walking around, talking to lots of physicians, visiting ICUs and cath labs.  I visited the outpatient department where 7,000 people show up every day, many lining up the night before, to get a ticket by 11 a.m., when registration closes and those who haven’t gotten a ticket are out of luck.  In the ER, there was a line of between 50 and 100 people waiting to get rabies shots.  This is the hospital where every poor person in Delhi unfortunate enough to get a dog bite is sent.  They have the rabies serum.  Most other public hospitals do not.

Safdarjung has “efficiency” baked in.  In a typical year, they do 800 cardiac surgeries, 2,000 angioplasties, 3,000 echocardiograms, and 100,000 EKGs.  They see tens of thousands of patients in the cardiology clinic.  They have 4 (yes, four) full-time cardiologists on staff.  The rest of the work is done by medical residents, who call when they get into trouble.  Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which probably doesn’t have one quarter the volume of this place, has 140 cardiologists.  The patients at Safdarjung pay essentially nothing.  Even their medications are free.  For those who are not extremely poor (and I doubt there are many non-poor patients who go to Safdarjung), you do have to pay for your own devices.  Need a stent?  Bare metal ones cost $200 to $1000.  Drug eluting stents are $1500 to $2500.  You get to decide which one you want.  They have a chart with pictures and prices that looks a lot like a dinner menu. Continue reading…

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