Table 5.

—Association of Attending Physician Specialty With Medical-Record-Assessed Outcomes^a

Medical Record Outcome	No.	P Valueb	Regression Coefficientb
			Medicine	Surgery	Neurosurgery	Neurology
Palliative consult	2,193c	< .001	Ref	−0.702d	−1.995e	−1.048d
Social work servicese	3,121	.675	Ref	0.055	0.188	−0.144
Spiritual caref	3,121	< .001	Ref	0.041	0.749e	−0.199
DNR in placeg	3,110	< .001	Ref	−0.635e	0.226	1.279h
LST withdrawn/withheldi	3,110	.008	Ref	−0.364d	0.218	0.234
Pain assessment	3,122	.007	Ref	−0.187	−0.643d	−0.685h
CPR avoided, last hour	3,106	< .001	Ref	−0.813e	2.844d	2.234h
Family conference, first 72 h	3,109	< .001	Ref	−0.215	0.625d	0.633h
Prognosis discussed, first 72 hj	3,107	< .001	Ref	−0.255h	0.551d	0.783e
Days in ICU	3,122	< .001	Ref	−0.250e	−0.010	0.510e
Time to MV withdrawalj	1,581	< .001	Ref	−0.318e	0.149	0.593e

LST = life-sustaining therapy; MV = mechanical ventilation. See Table 2 and 3 legends for expansion of other abbreviations.

^aAssociations for all outcomes except those related to time (days in ICU and time to MV withdrawal) were tested with multipredictor logistic regression models; the time-related variables were tested with Cox models (for Cox model coefficients, the higher the value, the shorter the associated time period). All estimates are based on restricted maximum likelihood. All models included covariate adjustment for hospital (13 dummy indicators) in addition to outcome-specific confounder adjustments noted in subsequent table footnotes.

^bThe overall P value for physician specialty is based on the reduction in deviance obtained in a model in which the coefficients for the three dummy indicators for physician specialty were freely estimated, when compared with a model in which the three specialty-related regression coefficients were constrained to 0.0.

^cFrom the initial 3,121 records with valid data on all predictors, 928 records were not used in the coefficient estimates for palliative care consult because this outcome was uniformly 0 at five of the hospitals, and records from those hospitals were dropped for purposes of estimation.

^dP < .01.

^eP < .001.

^fThis model included covariate adjustment for patient age.

^gThis model included covariate adjustment for patient age and sex.

^hP < .05.

ⁱThis model included covariate adjustment for disease (cancer, trauma, other).

^jThis model included covariate adjustment for patient age and disease (cancer, trauma, other).