Remuneration Of Health Workers Research Articles

Healthcare Delivery in the Face of Economic Recession: Challenges, Prospects and Pragmatic Solutions.

Introduction: The Nigerian health sector faces several challenges especially during economic recession. These encumbrances have led to low productivity, worsened out-of-pocket expenditure with its attendant "health shock” and poor service delivery. Methodology: A didactic empirical literature review of articles bordering on key terminologies in the title was perused to guide this article. Results Economic recession hampers productivity of both professional personnel and the government in rendering services to the populace on one hand while it may be difficult for the people to access care on the other hand. These bring to the fore, the problems of escalated prices of drugs, low patronage of accredited hospitals, rapid migration of professionals in search of “greener pastures”, and increase in morbidity and mortality in the populace. When these occur, to achieve health for all and Universal Health Coverage becomes a mirage. Discussion: Prospects and pragmatic solutions have been suggested such as funding and financing mechanisms especially Health Insurance Schemes, limiting of medical tourisms to only when it is expressly needed, adequate remuneration of health workers, healthy government policies with policy direction, and needs assessment among other solutions. Conclusion: Healthcare during recession will be better improved when economic indicators are thematically addressed to yield palpable impacts as these will go a long way to alleviate the dwindling health care delivery in a recessed economy. Keywords: Healthcare, Challenges, Recessed economy, Prospects, Solutions, Nigeria.

A cross-sectional study of the income sources of primary care health workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo

BackgroundIn the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the state system to remunerate health workers is poorly functional, encouraging diversification of income sources and corruption. Given the central role that health workers play in health systems, policy-makers need to ensure health workers are remunerated in a way which best incentivises them to provide effective and good quality services. This study describes the different sources and quantities of income paid to primary care health workers in Equateur, Maniema, Kasai Occidental, Province Orientale and Kasai Oriental provinces. It also explores characteristics associated with the receipt of different sources of income.MethodsQuantitative data on the income received by health workers were collected through baseline surveys. Descriptive statistics explored the demographic characteristics of health workers surveyed, and types and amounts of incomes received. A series of regression models were estimated to examine the health worker and facility-level determinants of receiving each income source and of levels received. Qualitative data collection was carried out in Kasai Occidental province to explore perceptions of each income source and reasons for receiving each.ResultsNurses made up the majority of workers in primary care. Only 31% received a government salary, while 75% reported compensation from user fees. Almost half of all nurses engaged in supplemental non-clinical activities. Receipt of government payments was associated with income from private practice and non-clinical activities. Male nurses were more likely to receive per diems, performance payments, and higher total remuneration compared to females. Contextual factors such as provincial location, presence of externally financed health programmes and local user fee policy also influenced the extent to which nurses received many income sources.ConclusionsThe receipt of government payments was unreliable and had implications for receipt of other income sources. A mixture of individual, facility and geographical factors were associated with the receipt of various income sources. Greater co-ordination is needed between partners involved in health worker remuneration to design more effective financial incentive packages, reduce the fragmentation of incomes and improve transparency in the payment of workers in the DRC.

Performance-based financing in the context of the complex remuneration of health workers: findings from a mixed-method study in rural Sierra Leone.

BackgroundThere is growing interest on the impact of performance-based financing (PBF) on health workers’ motivation and performance. However, the literature so far tends to look at PBF payments in isolation, without reference to the overall remuneration of health workers. Taking the case of Sierra Leone, where PBF was introduced in 2011, this study investigates the absolute and relative contribution of PBF to health workers’ income and explores their views on PBF bonuses, in comparison to and interaction with other incomes.MethodsThe study is based on a mixed-methods research consisting in a survey and an 8-week longitudinal logbook collecting data on the incomes of primary health workers (n = 266) and 39 in-depth interviews with a subsample of the same workers, carried out in three districts of Sierra Leone (Bo, Kenema and Moyamba).ResultsOur results show that in this setting PBF contributes about 10 % of the total income of health workers. Despite this relatively low contribution, their views on the bonuses are positive, especially compared to the negative views on salary. We find that this is because PBF is seen as a complement, with less sense of entitlement compared to the official salary. Moreover, PBF has a specific role within the income utilization strategies enacted by health workers, as it provides extra money which can be used for emergencies or reinvested in income generating activities. However, implementation issues with the PBF scheme, such as delays in payment and difficulties in access, cause a series of problems that limit the motivational effects of the incentives. Overall, staff still favor salary increases over increases in PBF.ConclusionsThe study confirms that the remuneration of health workers is complex and interrelated so that the different financial incentives cannot be examined independently from one. It also shows that the implementation of PBF schemes has an impact on the way it does or does not motivate health workers, and must be thoroughly researched in order to assess the impact of PBF.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1546-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

An exploration of the political economy dynamics shaping health worker incentives in three districts in Sierra Leone

The need for evidence-based practice calls for research focussing not only on the effectiveness of interventions and their translation into policies, but also on implementation processes and the factors influencing them, in particular for complex health system policies. In this paper, we use the lens of one of the health system's ‘building blocks’, human resources for health (HRH), to examine the implementation of official policies on HRH incentives and the emergence of informal practices in three districts of Sierra Leone. Our mixed-methods research draws mostly from 18 key informant interviews at district level. Data are organised using a political economy framework which focuses on the dynamic interactions between structure (context, historical legacies, institutions) and agency (actors, agendas, power relations) to show how these elements affect the HRH incentive practices in each district. It appears that the official policies are re-shaped both by implementation challenges and by informal practices emerging at local level as the result of the district-level dynamics and negotiations between District Health Management Teams (DHMTs) and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). Emerging informal practices take the form of selective supervision, salary supplementations and per diems paid to health workers, and aim to ensure a better fit between the actors' agendas and the incentive package. Importantly, the negotiations which shape such practices are characterised by a substantial asymmetry of power between DHMTs and NGOs. In conclusion, our findings reveal the influence of NGOs on the HRH incentive package and highlight the need to empower DHMTs to limit the discrepancy between policies defined at central level and practices in the districts, and to reduce inequalities in health worker remuneration across districts. For Sierra Leone, these findings are now more relevant than ever as new players enter the stage at district level, as part of the Ebola response and post-Ebola reconstruction.

Factors militating against effective implementation of primary health care (PHC) system in Nigeria

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the factors that militate against effective implementation of a primary health care (PHC) system in Nigeria. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted at four selected PHC centers in Enugu State from November 2014 to January 2015. The primary health center was chosen by systemic sampling from about eight primary health centers in Enugu metropolis. The sixteen-item questionnaire was elaborated with the Likert scale. Data retrieved were collected with the aid of a structured study pro forma and analyzed using SPSS Version 18. Results: A total of 169 health workers were recruited from four primary health centers. The mean age of all participants was 38.42 years standard deviation (SD) = 9.8, while the male: Female ratio was 2:1. Among the subjects, 59% were aged 30-39 years. Existing equipment and manpower on one hand and job security and salary on the other hand are negative factors in the implementation of PHC; the respondents believed that adequate supply of gloves, needles, bandages, good access to drugs and medications, a good cold chain system, and full implementation of immunization programs all exist in PHC centers. Adequate community participation, culture and religion, access to safe and clean water, and steady electricity, on the other hand, are nonexistent in the PHC centers in the study. Conclusions: The PHC centers studied showed that much remains to be desired, especially in terms of manpower, communication, and the remuneration of health workers.

Health worker remuneration in WHO Member States.

To present the available data on the money spent by Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) on remunerating health workers in the public and private sectors. Data on government and total expenditure on health worker remuneration were obtained through a review of official documents in WHO's Global Health Expenditure Database and directly from country officials and country official web sites. Such data are presented in this paper, by World Bank country income groups, in millions of national currency units per calendar year for salaried and non-salaried health workers. They are presented as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), total health expenditure and general government health expenditure. The average yearly change in remuneration (i.e. compound annual growth rate) between 2000 and 2012 as a function of these parameters was also assessed. On average, payments to health workers of all types accounted for more than one third of total health expenditure across countries. Such payments have grown faster than countries' GDPs but less rapidly than total health expenditure and general government health expenditure. Remuneration of health workers, on the other hand, has grown faster than that of other types of workers. As they seek to attain universal health coverage (UHC), countries will need to devote an increasing proportion of their GDPs to health and health worker remuneration. However, the fraction of total health expenditure devoted to paying health workers seems to be declining, partly because the pursuit of UHC calls for strengthening the health system as a whole.

Shortage of health workers in the Malawian public health services system: how do parliamentarians perceive the problem?*

The quality and quantity of health care services delivered by the Malawi public health system is severely limited, due to, among other things the shortage of adequate numbers of trained health care workers. In order to suggest policy changes and implement corrective measures, there may be need to describe the perceptions of the legislature on how they perceive as the cause of the problem, which could be the solutions and an evaluation of those solution. In this paper, I present the finding from a qualitative study of Hansards (official verbatim record of parliamentary speeches) analysed by discourse analysis. Parliamentarians identified the shortage of health workers as resulting from death, retirement and brain drain to other countries mostly the UK, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Training more health workers, training new but lower cadres of health workers not marketable to the outside world, improving the working conditions and remuneration of health workers are suggested as some of the solutions. Even without the brain drain of health workers to other countries, Malawi's health sector personnel numbers are not adequate to serve the needs of the country. Relying on training more health workers in the numbers normally produced from the prevailing training institutions is unlikely to remove the shortages.

Shortage of health workers in the Malawian public health services system: how do parliamentarians perceive the problem?

The quality and quantity of health care services delivered by the Malawi public health system is severely limited, due to, among other things the shortage of adequate numbers of trained health care workers. In order to suggest policy changes and implement corrective measures, there may be need to describe the perceptions of the legislature on how they perceive as the cause of the problem, which could be the solutions and an evaluation of those solution. In this paper, I present the finding from a qualitative study of Hansards (official verbatim record of parliamentary speeches) analysed by discourse analysis. Parliamentarians identified the shortage of health workers as resulting from death, retirement and brain drain to other countries mostly the UK, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Training more health workers, training new but lower cadres of health workers not marketable to the outside world, improving the working conditions and remuneration of health workers are suggested as some of the solutions. Even without the brain drain of health workers to other countries, Malawi's health sector personnel numbers are not adequate to serve the needs of the country. Relying on training more health workers in the numbers normally produced from the prevailing training institutions is unlikely to remove the shortages. African Journal of Health Sciences Vol. 12(3-4) 2005: 101-107