iHRIS Retain Used to Cost Health Worker Retention Incentives in Lao PDR
In September, Grace Chee from CapacityPlus partner Abt Associates traveled to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) to assist the Ministry of Health in costing retention incentive packages for health workers through a field-test of iHRIS Retain.
iHRIS Retain is an open source tool CapacityPlus is developing in collaboration with the World Health Organization to cost retention interventions at the district, regional, or national level. It is specifically designed for costing rural retention interventions. Retaining health workers in remote areas is a major challenge to delivering quality health services in low-resource countries. In Lao PDR more than 80% of people live in rural areas.
Through hands-on instruction, Chee trained Ministry staff to use iHRIS Retain to cost various scenarios of retention incentive packages, including career promotion and continuing education opportunities. The incentives were identified as priorities for doctors, medical assistants, and nurses/midwives during a recent rapid discrete choice experiment conducted with health workers and students to determine their motivational preferences for accepting posts and remaining in facilities in rural and remote areas.
Chee worked with staff from the Ministry’s Department for Organization and Personnel and the WHO to gather necessary data—including budget information, staff numbers, staff salaries, and operational costs for incentives such as health worker housing and transportation—and produce cost projections for national and district-level implementation. Ministry staff presented the costing results to the Human Resources Technical Working Group on October 6.
iHRIS Retain is the newest addition to CapacityPlus’s iHRIS Suite of open source software for the health workforce. The tool will be refined based on the field-test and Chee’s suggestions for improving the functionality of the software, and will be disseminated early next year.
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Photo by Laura Wurts. (Nursing students from Champasak Provincial College completing the rapid discrete choice experiment survey)
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