Using Reverse Innovation to Improve Healthcare Management in Response to COVID-19

Leaders are starting to appreciate the low-cost technologies and efficient delivery designs of developing nations. The DOCTOR model — delivery, outreach, cost, task-shifting, optimization, and revolutionary change — helps to educate professionals and promote the implementation of reverse innovation in the U.S. healthcare system in response to COVID-19 and other large-scale public health emergencies.

With the advent of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, many analysts are trying to predict the associated costs for an overburdened U.S. healthcare system (1). With healthcare in the United States reaching approximately $4 trillion annually and compromising 18% of the gross domestic product (GDP), healthcare costs already represent a significant economic burden (2,3). If COVID-19 infects 20 percent of the American population, the U.S. will have to spend $163.4 billion to cover infection cases

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the need for improvements in hospital management. Management and healthcare professionals can utilize aspects of reverse innovation to provide better healthcare for all Americans.