Choosing the right specialty
Pick a specialty that reaches the right experts — and decide how wide to cast the net.
What you'll do
By the end of this page, you'll know how to pick the specialty on your case so it reaches the experts who can actually weigh in — and how to widen or narrow that reach on purpose.
Before you start
- A case you're creating or editing. The specialty picker is the Required Specialty field on the case form. See Creating cases for the full form.
- A rough idea of the field of medicine your case turns on. You don't need the exact subspecialty name — the picker lets you search and browse.
Specialty is how your case finds experts
Your case is only shown to — and can only be opined on by — experts whose own specialty lines up with the one you choose. It's the single biggest lever on who reads your case, so it's worth a few seconds to get right. Everything else (urgency, number of opinions, jurisdiction) narrows from there.
Physician or non-physician — the two tabs
At the top of the picker are two tabs:
- MD/DO — physicians. Medical doctors and doctors of osteopathic medicine, across every field and subspecialty.
- NPP — non-physician practitioners. Nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, therapists, and other licensed medical experts.
Pick the tab that fits the expertise your case needs, then search or scroll. Most malpractice and injury cases want the MD/DO tab; reach for NPP when the standard of care in question is a nurse's, a PA's, or another clinician's.
How wide to cast the net
Every option in the list is one of three kinds. A small badge tells you which — and each one reaches a different group of experts:
| Your choice | How it appears in the list | Who it reaches |
|---|---|---|
| A specific subspecialty | e.g. Interventional Cardiology (Cardiovascular Disease) — no badge | Only experts who hold that exact subspecialty. The narrowest, most precise match. |
| A whole field | e.g. Cardiovascular Disease — all subspecialties — whole field badge | Any expert in that field, whatever their particular subspecialty. |
| A subspecialty, in any field | e.g. Addiction Medicine (any specialty) — any specialty badge | Any expert who practices that subspecialty, no matter which base specialty they trained in. |
The rule of thumb: the narrower your choice, the more precisely matched your experts — but the smaller the pool. A specific subspecialty gets you exactly the right reader; a whole field gets you more readers, sooner.
Pick the most specific option that genuinely fits your case. If your case truly hinges on, say, a stent placement, Interventional Cardiology reaches better-matched experts than the whole cardiology field. But if any cardiologist could speak to it, the whole field gets you opinions faster.
A handful of fields are fused in the underlying taxonomy — most notably Psychiatry & Neurology. For those, the picker offers a curated split so you can reach one side without the other: search "neurology" and you'll find both Neurology — all subspecialties (every neurologist, no psychiatrists) and the individual neurology subspecialties. Use the split when you want the whole neurology (or psychiatry) pool; use a specific subspecialty when the case turns on one.
Picking more than one specialty
A case can need more than one field — a birth-injury matter might want both an obstetrician and a neonatologist. Add as many specialties as the case genuinely calls for; each one you add is shown as a removable chip, and your case matches an expert who holds any of them. Keep the set tight — every extra specialty widens the pool, which can dilute how well-matched the responders are.
Patient population
Some cases turn on the patient's age, not just the field of medicine — a seizure in a 5-year-old wants a pediatric neurologist, not an adult one. Above the specialty picker is a Patient population control:
- Adult (the default) — no age narrowing.
- Pediatric, Neonatal, Adolescent, Geriatric — narrows the specialties you've chosen to the age-specific experts.
When you set a population, the picker filters to the specialties that have an age-specific form — pick Pediatric and you'll only be offered pediatric specialties (choosing Neurology there reaches child neurologists). If a specialty has no age-specific form, it simply isn't offered for that population; choose Adult to see the full list. Below your choices, the form previews exactly which specialties the selection reaches, so you can see what you're targeting before you post.
Population narrows the pool to the right experts. If a narrowed case is slow to draw opinions, the "Expand the search if my case stalls" switch below widens it back to the whole field (age-specific and general experts alike) — so you get precision first and reach as a safety net.
"Expand the search if my case stalls"
Just below the specialty picker is a switch, on by default, labelled Expand the search if my case stalls.
- Left on, if few experts respond to your specific subspecialty, Kalivar quietly broadens the case to a wider group of related experts so it still gets read — without you having to touch it. If you set a patient population, this is also what widens the case back past the age-specific scope to the whole field.
- Turn it off to keep the case locked to your exact specialty, even if that means waiting longer for the right expert.
Leave it on unless you have a strong reason to insist on one precise subspecialty and no one else. It only ever kicks in if your original choice is quiet.
The switch can only widen if there is somewhere wider to go
Choosing a field plus a population always has somewhere to widen back to — the rest of that field. But picking a narrow subspecialty directly from the search box can leave nothing wider to reach, and the case then stays exactly as posted. If a case draws no opinions at all, check the specialty you chose: broadening it yourself, or picking the whole field with a population instead, is what opens it up.
A note on state licensure
Specialty decides which field of experts can opine. If your case also lists required U.S. states, that adds a second condition on top:
- Prefer these states — every matched expert can still opine; those licensed in your states simply rank higher.
- Only these states — limits opinions to experts licensed in at least one of the states you listed.
So a very narrow specialty and Only these states together can make for a small pool. If a case is slow to attract opinions, loosening either one is the usual fix. Jurisdiction is set on the case form — see Creating cases.
Tips
- Start specific, keep the expand switch on. You get precise matches first and a safety net if the case stalls.
- Use the search box — type a plain name like "cardiology", "ENT", or "OB/GYN" and the picker surfaces the right field even if its formal name differs.
- A whole field choice is the fastest way to a high response rate when any expert in the field would do.
- If a case isn't drawing opinions, widen the specialty or relax Only these states before anything else.