Productivity

Understanding Health Workforce Productivity at the Facility Level: A New eLearning Course

Sarah Dwyer — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 17:47:52 +0000

People drive health systems. In the words of Vujicic and colleagues, health workers are “gatekeepers and navigators for the effective or wasteful application of all other resources.”

The global health community recognizes that there is “no health without a workforce.” Efforts have been made to train, deploy, and retain more health workers in areas where they are most needed. But beyond this, we need those health workers that are already at their jobs to be productive.

What does this mean? Well, imagine that you are a district health manager.

Author's name:

Rachel Deussom

Publication Date:

October 2014

Supporting Country-Led Efforts to Recruit and Retain Health Workers and Improve Their Productivity

Sarah Dwyer — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 20:30:08 +0000

This post was originally published on the Global Health Workforce Alliance Members’ Platform. CapacityPlus is the featured member in March. We encourage you to join and contribute to the discussion.

In recent years, heightened attention has been given to scaling up the production of health workers in response to the global human resources for health (HRH) crisis. While many countries face absolute health worker shortages and need to increase their availability, the HRH crisis is not just a supply problem. CapacityPlus provides technical assistance to ensure that health workers are more equitably distributed—especially to rural and other underserved areas, remain working at their posts, and effectively provide health care services in order to increase access to quality family planning, reproductive health, HIV and AIDS, and other primary health services and help countries move toward universal health coverage.

Author's name:

Wanda Jaskiewicz

Publication Date:

March 2014

You Can’t Say Enough About Leadership

Carol Bales — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 13:16:03 +0000

During a recent visit to a district hospital in the Vientiane municipality of Lao People’s Democratic Republic, I was once again reminded of the critical influence effective leadership has in strengthening health workforce productivity.

Since the region’s development of its strategic action plan, Vision 2009, the hospital director has taken implementation of his hospital’s plan to provide quality health care very seriously. This was especially evident in the productivity gains that he recounted to our visiting team: from 2006 to 2012, outpatient visits increased from 6,000 to 16,000 per year while institutional deliveries rose from 85 to 250.

Author's name:

Wanda Jaskiewicz

Publication Date:

November 2012

Saving Lives Shouldn’t Mean You Risk Your Own

Carol Bales — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 17:36:27 +0000

Health workers shouldn’t have to put themselves at risk in order to do their jobs. But in fact, many frontline health workers face a wide range of occupational safety and health hazards—biological, physical, chemical, and psychosocial, as well as gender-based violence and discrimination.

Let’s take a look at one health worker—the nurse below on the left.

Author's name:

Sarah Dwyer and Rachel Deussom

Publication Date:

September 2012

Crowdsourcing: The New Buzz in Productivity and Quality

jennifer — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:21:15 +0000

CapacityPlus is developing a crowdsourcing application and exploring pilot sites in several countries. This initiative will allow the general public with any mobile telephone—with simple SMS texting capability—to report on the presence or absence of health workers, patient waiting times, or other selected quality or productivity indicators at any given clinic at any point in time.

Unless health workers report to their assigned facilities at the agreed upon hours and efficiently manage their time, increasing the production of qualified health workers is meaningless.

However, a relatively easy method for improving health worker productivity is through crowdsourcing.

Author's name:

Laura Wurts

Publication Date:

January 2011