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You are ready to start your costing work. This overview of iHRIS Retain will help plan how best to use this software to meet your costing needs. We suggest that you read this overview before starting your work.

You can find more detailed information in the manual by clicking 'Manual' under the 'Help' menu at the top of the screen.

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iHRIS Retain is designed to allow you to compare costs of various intervention packages that may be under consideration, so you can make better informed decisions. After entering information about the interventions that you are considering, you will create packages of interventions for various cadres of workers. You may then use iHRIS Retain to compare the total costs and expected effects of different packages or different combinations of interventions.

If you are conducting this costing work along with a discrete choice experiment (DCE) analysis of health worker preferences, the simplest approach is to create packages based on your DCE results and health worker preferences. Even if you have not conducted a DCE analysis, comparing costs and anticipated effects of different packages of interventions is important to good decision making. However, your data on expected health worker preferences may be based on less rigorous estimates.

Data entry within iHRIS Retain is organized into five main steps.

Step 1: Financial Information
This step captures basic information related to health expenditures, including wage information.

Step 2: Targeted Cadres
In this step, you will provide information on the current and projected numbers of targeted health worker cadres. You may enter in cadre names as specifically or broadly as necessary. For example, depending on how you will target your interventions, you may enter Registered Nurse (Senior) and Registered Nurse (Junior), or group all nurses and all midwives together.

Step 3: Selected Interventions
This step allows you to provide information related to the costs of the interventions that are under consideration. We suggest that you enter information for various cadres separately. For example, if you are considering an education allowance for three different cadres, enter in the data on costs and numbers of targeted workers for each cadre separately.

Data entry for each intervention is preceded by a field for the “Description” of the intervention. It will be helpful to provide more complete information under this description. For example, entering “Housing allowance for nurses” is recommended rather than just “Housing,” as this text will be duplicated in various reports. More complete descriptions will help avoid later confusion.

Step 4: Information Review
This step allows you to review the information you previously entered and make any necessary changes.

Step 5: Package Design
You will create and compare different packages of interventions targeting various cadres of health workers.

It will be helpful to provide full information within the name of the package. For example, use the name “Package 1: housing, bonuses, and education support for nurses” rather than just “Package 1.”

Step 6: Report Review
This step allows you review various summary reports comparing the various intervention activities and packages of intervention activities.

Reports
After you have completed initial data entry, the tabs under “Summary of Costing Exercise” allow you do the following:
  • Generate and download reports with the outputs of your work
  • Modify any of the data entered
  • Conduct analyses to identify an affordable set of packages to implement. Under the “Reports” table, you may generate three different types of reports by cadre, or a detailed report of interventions for any of your packages.
Our Suggestions

  • After inputting the basic information, you should focus on providing the costs for all the interventions that are being considered, before creating any packages.
  • It is simpler to enter in data for each intervention for each cadre separately.
  • Once all the cost data are entered, create packages based on information of the highest priorities to health workers. If a DCE analysis has been conducted, follow those results to create your packages and preference rates. If a DCE has not been conducted, you may create packages based on information of health worker preferences from health worker surveys or other assessments that may have been conducted.

iHRIS Retain

Cost Health Worker Retention Interventions

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