How You Pay Health Workers Matters: A Primer on Health Worker Remuneration Methods

The way doctors and nurses are paid can provide strong incentives for improving health worker productivity and quality of care—issues that are pertinent in many developing country health systems. In many low-income countries, health workers in the public sector receive most of their compensation in the form of a salary. This note provides a brief overview of some alternative payment schemes and how they affect selected elements of health workforce performance—namely absenteeism, productivity and quality of care.