Table 6.
Percentage of Physicians Who Agreed with Expert Witnesses.
| Agreed with Expert Witness* | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Case | Physician Group | Plaintiff†, % (n) | Defense†, % (n) | Both†, % (n) |
| Coronary artery disease | Community family practice | 35 (71) | 67 (70) | 13 (70) |
| Academic family practice | 29 (31) | 74 (31) | 13 (31) | |
| Community cardiology | 37 (30) | 87 (30) | 23 (30) | |
| Academic cardiology | 39 (13) | 92 (13) | 31 (13) | |
| All physicians | 35 (145) | 75 (144) | 17 (144) | |
| Appendicitis | Community family practice | 79 (56) | 29 (56) | 18 (56) |
| Academic family practice | 79 (33) | 27 (33) | 15 (33) | |
| Community surgery | 82 (49) | 12 (49) | 6 (49) | |
| Academic surgery | 60 (5) | 0 (5) | 0 (5) | |
| All physicians | 79 (143) | 22 (143) | 13 (143) | |
| Cancer‡ | Community family practice | 75 (40) | 30 (40) | 13 (40) |
| Community OB/Gyn | 43 (30) | 50 (30) | 7 (30) | |
| Academic OB/Gyn | 82 (11) | 18 (11) | 0 (11) | |
| All physicians | 64 (81) | 36 (81) | 9 (81) | |
*
Physicians were considered to agree if their rating was 5–7 on a 7-point scale where 1 = completely disagree and 7 = completely agree.
†
P < .001 for the variation by case in the percentages of community family physicians who agreed with the plaintiff expert (also with the defense expert). Variation in agreement rates were also statistically significant for the specialists.
‡
Percentage of physicians who agreed with the expert witness was significantly associated with physician type for the plaintiff's witness in the cancer case (P = .01). Other associations with physician type were not significant.