Purpose

The purpose of the Cost and Staffing Projection Tool is to calculate the costs of meeting health worker staffing targets, in terms of both salaries and pre-service training costs. 

Description

The Cost and Staffing Projection Tool is a spreadsheet-based tool developed by MSH with funding from DFID, for an evaluation of Malawi’s Emergency Human Resources Programme (EHRP). The tool estimates the number of health workers required to meet population-based staffing norms; then calculates the cost of pre-service training needed to produce the number of health workers; and finally calculates the resulting salary costs of meeting health worker targets. The tool allows for a period of up to ten years, and accounts for health worker attrition when determining the number of health workers needed to enter the system to meet targets.

Intended Users

Human Resources for Health planners and managers.

Advantages

• The tool is easy to use and easily adapted to individual country contexts; additionally, it can be used at the district, regional, or national level. The tool calculates the following:
• the number of health workers, by specific cadre, required to fulfill population-based norms, taking into account health worker attrition;
• the number of additional health workers needed to undergo pre-service training so as to enter into the health system;
• the total cost of tuitions at pre-service institutes required to build up an adequate health workforce;
• the total cost of paying health worker salaries over a period of up to 10 years.
  

Limitations

This tool assumes that pre-service training outputs are directly linked to entry into the health system (i.e.. through a mechanism such as bonding), although this may not necessarily be the case.  

Recommendations for Users

Human resources for health managers can use this tool to assess health worker staffing needs and associated costs; for planning and budgeting purposes, as well as to advocate for more funding from Ministries of Finance, etc.

Inquiries

All inquiries can be sent to costingtools@msh.org