Waiting

In spite of my grumble, many of the talks in the conference were indeed very good.

TM, one of our trainees, was amazed to learn from the plenary lecture of the opening ceremony that the waiting time for heart ultrasound scan in Jamaica is one day. In Hong Kong, the average time that a patient has to wait is one week if the request is urgent - and easily over one year for a routine referral.

"That's easy," I said to myself, "We can always cut down the waiting time of any surgery, or X-ray or whatever, to one day - as long as you turn down or neglect most of the demand. Alternatively, we could easily achieve that short a waiting list by taking you a year or two to be put on that list of waiting."

PS. In real life, the latter strategy is more commonly applied in reverse: Patients are seen and put on list as quickly as possible, but it takes ages to stay on the list before it comes to your turn for whatever procedure you need.