The core question that this study investigates is: Having made substantial progression in healthcare outcomes during the past decades, what’s next for Qatar’s healthcare? What does Qatar need to do to continue to make significant improvements in healthcare? To answer this question we first look back at realized gains, then look ahead at the value of the potential next leap, and finish with concrete recommendations on how to realize the next quantum leap in healthcare.

Looking back: Qatar has achieved nearly world class healthcare outcomes; Qatar is now amongst the best in the GCC and among the top 20% of all countries worldwide. This achievement is mainly driven by heavy investments in hospitals. Hospital infrastructure in Qatar is world-class. As a result of this, the per capita expenditure on healthcare is also slightly higher than Western European countries, since hospital care is generally more costly then primary care or self-care.

Looking ahead: Qatar needs to strengthen the grassroots of healthcare: patient empowerment and primary care. The healthcare pyramid is top heavy and by investing in delivery capacity at the base, Qatar can achieve better outcomes at nearly the same spend while also better accommodating for demographic changes. Keeping the spend the same is an impressive outlook, since demand for care will increase by ~30% the coming decade as the population ages.

Taking it forward: To make the healthcare ‘journey in reverse’, Qatar will need to do more than simply invest in primary care and home care capacity. It needs to actively integrate pathways across the layers of the pyramid. Furthermore, Qatar will need to develop trust in the value of utilizing care at the base of the healthcare pyramid: people need to see why care at home or in primary care setting is often better for them then complex secondary care. In this study, we elaborate on a possible mechanism, based on segmentation and personalized care models, to develop this trust in primary care and self-care.