Editor’s Note: Based in Raleigh, NC, IndUShealth recently released a patient experience study. Using data gathered over the past five years, the study highlights key aspects of the care experience and the motivations of American retail and corporate patients that the company has coordinated care for at a network of hospitals in India. Company founder and CEO Rajesh Rao spoke to us about the study, as well as how the nature of IndUShealth’s business has evolved over the past five years.   Medical Travel Today (MTT):  Let’s start with some background on the study. When was it conducted and what was the purpose? Rahesh Rao (RR): The study includes data collected on patients over a five-year period beginning January 2006 and running through January 2011. For every patient included we had a full 12 months of data. If we didn’t have that complete set of data, either because they had traveled less than a year ago for care or we simply lost touch with the patient after a period of time, we removed them from the set. Beyond that, the data represents every patient experience we’ve handled in that time period. Initially we collected the data simply for our own edification and as a means to learn from and improve on what we were doing. But now, as we service more corporate accounts, it’s data we are being asked to provide. It’s becoming very important to the prospect decision-making process, and it certainly serves to help stimulate conversations that go beyond the surface of medical travel.   MTT: How many hospitals are reflected in the data? RR: Thus far, we have worked with three hospital networks with most procedures taking place at six principal locations. Now, that may not sound like a lot for a company that’s been around as long as we have, but we’ve always favored quality over quantity when it comes to patient care. By working with a select set of hospitals, we have stronger relationships with the facilities and providers, and thus better assurance of medical outcomes and patient experience. From the beginning, and still today, we feel it’s very important not to overreach. That being said, we are just beginning to work with providers in Costa Rica. Our first patients will be going there in November. The motivation there is that one of our long-standing clients, a large employer group, has a few plant locations with almost 30 percent Hispanic population. We’re finding that for a segment of this largely blue-collar population, the option to travel to India for high quality care remains a tough sell with the culture and language barriers of India. We believe a solid Costa Rican option could answer the need.   MTT: Do the hospitals you work with all have dedicated international patient departments? RR: They do. In fact, that was one of our criteria in choosing to work with them.  We need to know that they had experience and could provide a level of service that either matches or exceeds the US hospital experience. Facilities with dedicated departments in-house are much better equipped to deliver that level of satisfaction.   MTT: For those facilities, is IndUShealth their principal facilitation partner or do they work with other companies? RR: They all work with other companies; we have no exclusive relationships.   MTT: You mentioned you now service more corporate accounts. Can you elaborate on that shift? RR: Certainly. We began in 2005 with the goal of serving the corporate market, but recognized that the only way to gain experience was to begin by serving the retail market.  It provided us a way to build the required relationships, work out the various processes, technology, and so forth. Around 2007, when self-insured companies started to view medical travel as a serious option, we shifted our marketing emphasis from retail to corporate. The retail market remains interesting, but there’s a lot of competition…a lot of different options, and it’s so much more fragmented. Plus, it’s definitely more expensive to recruit individual patients and, ultimately, the margins are smaller than on the corporate side. Today we have roughly 65,000 engaged subscribers in our pool and that number is growing. It’s the model we wanted from the beginning. We just had to wait for the market to catch up.   Part Two of this interview will appear in Issue 25.   About Rajesh Rao With more than 20 years of experience in the creation and growth of successful entrepreneurial businesses, Rajesh Rao provides IndUShealth a critical combination of operational, financial, and systems management skills. Mr. Rao began his career as a software engineer at IBM, later joining the founding team at Post Software International, where he ultimately became Director of Research and Development. Post Software became an established worldwide leader in retail systems automation and was acquired by Fujitsu ICL. Subsequently, Mr. Rao co-founded and served as CEO of Empower Corporation, an innovative enterprise e-learning software company that served several large multinational companies. Empower eventually became MindLever, which was acquired by Centra Software (Nasdaq: CTRA). Mr. Rao continued as General Manager at Centra prior to co-founding IndUShealth. Having faced ever-increasing costs of providing health benefits to employees in his previous companies, Mr. Rao decided to dedicate his time and resources to the pursuit of viable alternatives. He believed that the leveling of the global playing field would result in effective cross-border solutions with the potential to substantially reduce healthcare expenditures. As Co-Founder and CEO, Mr. Rao has been instrumental in building IndUShealth into a dominant player in the US that has helped the “medical tourism” trend mature and evolve to an entirely new level.  He enjoys being able to innovate and work with others to further expand IndUShealth’s offerings and broaden its scope of influence. Mr. Rao is recognized as an industry leader and is often asked to speak to audiences at meetings and conferences. He has been featured in several news articles, as well as in TV and radio interviews. In June 2006, Mr. Rao appeared as an expert witness before the US Senate Subcommittee on Aging, extolling the advantages of employer-sponsored medical travel, and sparking a national debate over insurers’ and corporations’ roles in medical tourism.  He was also invited to speak at a National Academies seminar that explored the potential role of medical tourism in providing a suitable alternative to Americans. He holds Bachelor’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from North Carolina State University.