Shift

You may argue it is a necessary evil to spend more time with each of our patient and ensure an excellent standard of care.

I beg to disagree.

(I could hear you gasp.)

The consideration could be very simple: Time of a doctor is the limiting resource.

Imagine if a consultant from Utopia wants to offer the best level of care to his patients by spending one hour with each of them - taking a detailed history, doing a thorough examination, going through every bit of the past record, and double-checking every prescription before the patient leave the consultation room - he would only be able to see three patients in an afternoon (assuming he is punctual for the clinic - which we all know is exceedingly unlikely).

But, the total number of patients attending that clinic, as well as the number of doctor, does not change. Let's say he is supposed to see ten patients in the clinic (a generous assumption), how about the remaining seven ? Alas, they will be seen by other doctors in a cursory manner. More so, the quality of care of the patients under other doctors would actually get worse, because part of the time would be spared for those additional patients diverted from that perfectionistic consultant.

If you need something quantitative, just consider this: An ordinary doctor would be expected to spend three hours for ten patients, 18 minutes each. If he has to see two additional patients, it becomes 15 minutes for each case, or a 16% reduction. The potential adverse consequence (and reduction in the level of patient satisfaction, as our extra-terrestrial friends are so fond of the term) would be much greater than the benefit for that lucky three patients who are now seeing that consultant.