[Instrument for patient classification: users' opinions and analisys of healthcare indicators].

This descriptive study was aimed at: 1.) investigating the users' opinions about an instrument for patient classification; 2.) analyzing the healthcare indicators that most contribute to classify patients in the healthcare categories. A questionnaire was used to collect the opinions of 24 users. The classification instrument was applied on 796 patients in a medical school hospital in the state of São Paulo, from September 2006 to May, 2007. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Discriminant Analysis were used for statistical analysis. Overall, the investigated users were satisfied with the instrument; however, they pointed out a certain tendency of the instrument to underestimate the nursing care category to which the patients belonged. The results revealed some healthcare indicators such as Therapy, Personal Hygiene, Skin Integrity and Health Education as the greatest discriminating care categories. The effective classification varied from 89.8% (semi-intensive care) to 95.6% (intensive care).