Retaining hospital workers: a rapid methodology to determine incentive packages.

As efforts are made to increase the production of new human resources for health, simultaneous attention must be placed on retaining existing health workers in hospitals and other health facilities for as long as possible to increase access to healthcare services. The US Agency for International Development (USAID)'s CapacityPlus project is designing a rapid retention survey tool using the discrete choice experiment, a powerful, quantitative method to determine the relative importance health workers place on different characteristics related to their choice of employment. The user-friendly tool will allow human resource managers to rapidly assess retention preferences to better pinpoint the bundle of incentives and interventions that would most cost-effectively motivate health workers to take up posts in underserved facilities. The results of the survey can be used locally to create evidence-based incentive packages or to advocate with policy-makers and other decision-makers regarding the most favorable national retention policies and strategies for implementation.