Process evaluation of the department of health human resources for health deployment program

The Philippine national government, through the Department of Health (DOH), has a long tradition of augmenting the supply of healthcare workers in underserved areas. Even with the adoption of the Local Government Code in 1991, which shifts the mandate of DOH from being the sole provider of health services to being the provider of technical services for health, DOH continues to deploy healthcare professionals throughout the country. Over the last decade, the national health resources for health (HRH) deployment program has expanded from a relatively small program with budgetary support of less than PHP 200 million with less than 500 deployed health professionals in 2010 to a massive program with budgetary support of PHP 10 billion and almost 30,000 health care workers in 2020. This process evaluation aims to assess the DOH-HRH deployment program design and logic and document its implementation vis-a-vis its stated design. The study finds that while the program has many advantages over individual local governments in reallocating HRH across geographic boundaries, there are both design and implementation challenges that may negatively impact the experiences of deployed healthcare workers, which, in turn, may reflect negatively on the program. The study also provides some actionable recommendations specific to these issues to improve the program.