Frailty index predicts geriatric psychiatry inpatient mortality: a case–control study

BACKGROUND: Many geriatric psychiatry patients suffer from complex psychiatric and medical problems and a minority of patients dies in‐hospital. We assess whether a frailty index (FI) predicts inpatient mortality. METHODS: Electronic health records from 276 patients of a geriatric psychiatry department over 3 years (2015–2017) in Austria were analysed using logistic regression analysis. RESULTS: Mortality rate was 4.2%. The adjusted effect of frailty (per 0.1 FI) on mortality was odds ratio = 3.25 (95% CI = 2.29–4.79). The area under the curve of 0.81 (95% CI = 0.76–0.86) suggested acceptable predictive accuracy. CONCLUSIONS: We found that a non‐negligible minority of geronto‐psychiatric patients died in‐hospital, which can be usefully predicted by the FI derived from routine electronic patient records.