Wait

To me, the major problem of double-checking all pathological specimens is the time people have to spend on the inevitable waiting of the result.

The problem may appear trivial. If the delay is 3 days for each specimen, the patient may have, say, 5 extra minutes of meaningless extra worry. (For visitors with some idea in health economics, the QALY is actually very small.)

However, the number of specimen is astronomical. If, by double-checking the result, each and every one of them costs a 5-minute lost of meaningful life, each 100,000 specimens would mean the reduction of life span of one year in one patient – take aside the effect of any delay in treatment.

The estimation is actually very simple. To the society as a whole, the cumulative cost of meaningful life is roughly the same as the number of extra pathologists that we need to hire to perform the double-checking. No, the life of our pathologist is not wasted, but each patient makes part of our time a meaningless waiting.

And, time, in the aggregate, is life.