[leonth]

If only everyone has your mindset. Patients do complain - a lot. They never think that waiting another 1 hour is okay because it makes things safer - what they think is that they (or the insurer / government) have paid us handsomely, they want to be treated ASAP, anything slower means they don't get what they deserve. Less prominently but still important is that individual departments are usually under pressure to show that they are progressing to be both safer and faster / more efficient - thus they might make slippery and controversial trade-offs.

There are important KPIs related to patient health and public health that depend on speed, such as length of inpatient stay, transit time in the ER / ED, time to first antibiotic treatment, turnaround time for medicines and supplies. Compromising these KPIs may lead to non-optimal care too regardless of patients complaining.

[studentrob]

> Patients do complain - a lot. They never think that waiting another 1 hour is okay because it makes things safer

Yup. This thread is full of folks who want to both have and eat their cake. Pick any two from the triangle {fast, cheap, high-quality}