Estimating the nursing costs for medical in-patients using the MY-DRG at a teaching hospital: the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia experience

Background Nursing care is a major portion of routine hospital care, especially when compared to more ancillary services such as labs, drugs, radiology, and other diagnostic and therapeutic procedures performed by doctors at the hospital. Although the nursing profession had been developed in Malaysia since the 1900s, the current hospital billing system does not reflect what nurses provide for their patients. To date, nursing service costs are poorly estimated in Malaysian economic studies. Nursing services are commonly lumped together into the patient’s total charge per day in the hospital, and billed as a flat daily rate, based on the type of room they occupy. The primary objective of this study was to calculate the inpatient nursing costs in six medical wards, which provide varied specialty services for UKMMC’s inpatients.