Nursing care intensity and cost profiles in oncology inpatients: A supportive care perspective

Inpatient oncology care involves substantial clinical and supportive care demands, with nursing care representing a major component of inpatient workload and resource utilisation. This retrospective observational study examined nursing care intensity and cost burden among hospitalised oncology patients using routinely collected administrative data from a tertiary hospital. Nursing care intensity was operationalised as nursing cost per inpatient day to standardise workload across admissions with varying lengths of stay. Descriptive analyses were performed alongside non parametric comparisons by diagnosis type and discharge outcomes, and associations between length of stay and cost indicators were assessed using Spearman correlation analysis. A total of 17,331 admissions were included. Hospital cost and nursing cost demonstrated marked right skewness, indicating concentration of resource utilisation among a subset of patients. Admissions involving malignant disease were associated with significantly higher nursing and total hospital costs and longer hospitalisation compared with benign tumour related admissions. Nursing care intensity was relatively evenly distributed across low, medium, and high categories, while patients with unfavourable discharge outcomes experienced substantially greater cumulative and daily nursing care burden. Length of stay was strongly associated with cumulative nursing and hospital costs but showed only a weak association with daily nursing care intensity. These findings suggest that nursing cost per inpatient day captures aspects of care complexity beyond duration of hospitalisation and may support more responsive supportive care planning and nursing workforce allocation in inpatient oncology services.