Physicians' needs for medical specialist support.

This article reports physicians' needs for medical specialists in the hospital care of their patients. Surveyed medical staffs reported a high degree of need for other practitioners of their own specialty and for the traditional hospital-based specialties of radiology and pathology. Cardiologists were selected as the second most important specialty by the respondents. Surgical specialists placed anesthesiologists highest on their lists. Additional analysis of clusters of specialties portrays the greatest similarity of needs for other specialists among family and general practitioners, general surgeons and thoracic surgeons and among endocrinologists and nephrologists.