3.

Value-Based Competition in Action

Narayana Health

The young cardiac surgeon was making the rounds in a pediatric ward in the B.M. Birla Hospital in Kolkata, India, walking with an older woman he had recently treated for a heart condition, when the woman suddenly turned and looked him in the eye.

“I know why you are here,” she said.

“Really?” Dr. Devi Shetty responded. “Tell me, please. Why am I here?”

“Because when God created these children with heart problems, he was preoccupied,” the woman answered. “He sent you here to treat them.”

It’s easy to see why, many years later, Shetty would say that the older woman, who was known throughout India as Mother Teresa, was an inspiring force behind Narayana Health, the Bangalore-based hospital system ...

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