Under NRHM, financial support is provided to States under National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) to strengthen the health system including engagement of Nurses, doctors and specialist on contractual basis based on the appraisal of requirements proposed by the States in their annual Programme Implementation Plans.

Support under NRHM is also provided by way of additional incentives to serve in remote underserved areas, so that health professionals find it attractive to join public health facilities in such areas. Performance based incentives are also being provided to motivate service providers to give better service delivery. State governments are also regularly requested to fill up the vacancies on priority.

Further, to increase the availability of doctors, several initiatives have been taken to rationalize the norms in medical education, such as, relaxation in land requirements, bed strength, increase in ceiling for maximum intake for undergraduates, enhancement of teacher-student ratio in PG etc which has resulted in substantial increase in number of undergraduate and post graduate seats. Government has also approved setting up of ANM/GNM Schools in different States besides setting up of Institutes of Paramedical Sciences at National and regional levels.

In order to encourage the States to fill up existing vacancies in remote rural areas, the states are being incentivized to ensure rational deployment of health human resource. Manpower deployment is also to be put on the web in public domain.