If confirmed, these results suggest that conventional antipsychotic medications are at least as likely as atypical agents to increase the risk of death among elderly persons and that conventional drugs should not be used to replace atypical agents discontinued in response to the FDA warning.

Many e-prescriptions were not filled. Previous studies of medication non-adherence failed to capture these prescriptions. Efforts to increase primary adherence could dramatically improve the effectiveness of medication therapy. Interventions that target specific medication classes may be most effective.

Objective To develop and validate a maternal comorbidity index to predict severe maternal morbidity, defined as the occurrence of acute maternal end-organ injury, or mortality. Methods Data were derived from the Medicaid Analytic eXtract for the years 2000 to 2007. The primary outcome was defined as the occurrence of maternal end-organ injury or death during the delivery hospitalization through 30 days postpartum. The dataset was randomly divided into a 2/3 development cohort and a 1/3 validation cohort. Using the development cohort, a logistic regression model predicting the primary outcome was created using a stepwise selection algorithm that included 24-candidate comorbid conditions and maternal age. Each of the conditions included in the final model was assigned a weight based on its beta coefficient, and these were used to calculate a maternal comorbidity index. Results The cohort included 854,823 completed pregnancies of which 9,901 (1.2%) were complicated by the primary study outcome. The derived score included 20 maternal conditions and maternal age. For each point increase in the score, the odds ratio for the primary outcome was 1.37, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) 1.35 to 1.39. The c-statistic for this model was 0.657, 95% CI 0.647 – 0.666. The derived score performed significantly better than available comorbidity indexes in predicting maternal morbidity and mortality. Conclusion This new maternal morbidity index provides a simple measure for summarizing the burden of maternal illness for use in the conduct of epidemiologic, health services, and comparative effectiveness research.