Vidar Jorgensen

Does a real health-care market exist anywhere in the world? It certainly doesn’t in the U.S., where health-care providers don’t tell patients in advance about pricing, outcomes or alternatives. Consumers don’t know what they’re buying or how much it costs. And the costs are largely paid by insurance companies, which don’t spend their own money. With a health-care market this dysfunctional, little wonder the U.S. spends 18% of gross domestic product on health.

Health City Cayman Islands (HCCI), less than three years old and located in the Caribbean just an hour’s flight south from Miami, is a 104-bed hospital outpost of Bangalore, India-headquartered Narayana Health (NH). HCCI has caught the attention of US health care professionals not just as a nearshore health care destination, but for having extremely high quality despite pricing that is a fraction of that in the US, as well as careful attention to the patient’s experience.