Remedying Urgent Health Worker Challenges in Haryana, India

The plaintiffs claimed they had been wrongly transferred due to record-keeping mistakes. A subsequent judicial review uncovered numerous clerical errors in the state's 25,000 employee records, including employees with identical names being misidentified. To address this issue, the Haryana Government, with technical support from USAID's Health Finance and Governance project (HFG), had been working on a solution: implementing a new Human Resources Information System (HRIS) to give all of its doctors, nurses, and other healthcare staff a unique identification number. The HRIS was designed to provide administrators with the data they need to manage their large health workforce. Before the HRIS was developed, Haryana's health worker personnel records were kept on paper, which likely contributed to the clerical errors cited in the lawsuit. The paper-based system also made it difficult for state officials to make evidence-based decisions on human resources policy and management. Haryana first established the online HRIS system with assistance from the USAID's CapacityPlus Project and has moved forward with support from HFG. The new system will allow for a better management of a workforce of more than 30,000 health workers and improve processes related to recruitment and retirement planning. In the longer term, it is likely that a well-functioning HRIS will yield additional benefits for Haryana, such as the identification of "ghost workers," employees who are absent from their posts or non-existent, which could result in significant cost savings for the state. Confirmation of vacancies could also allow the state to hire or transfer employees to facilities in need of additional staff. The Health Finance and Governance (HFG) Project, a flagship project of USAID's Office of Health Systems, supports its partners in low- and middle-income countries to strengthen the health finance and governance functions of their health systems, expanding access to life-saving health services. The HFG project is a five-year (2012-2017), $209 million global health project that builds on the achievements of the Health Systems 20/20 project. The project is led by Abt Associates in collaboration with several other organizations, including Avenir Health, Broad Branch Associates, and RTI International.