Developing a suicide risk model for use in the Indian Health Service

We developed and evaluated an electronic health record (EHR)-based model for suicide risk specific to an American Indian patient population. Using EHR data for all patients over 18 with a visit between 1/1/2017 and 10/2/2021, we developed a model for the risk of a suicide attempt or death in the 90 days following a visit. Features included demographics, medications, diagnoses, and scores from relevant screening tools. We compared the predictive performance of logistic regression and random forest models against existing suicide screening, which was augmented to include the history of previous attempts or ideation. During the study, 16,835 patients had 331,588 visits, with 490 attempts and 37 deaths by suicide. The logistic regression and random forest models (area under the ROC (AUROC) 0.83 [0.80–0.86]; both models) performed better than enhanced screening (AUROC 0.64 [0.61–0.67]). These results suggest that an EHR-based suicide risk model can add value to existing practices at Indian Health Service clinics.