Hiring more specialists alone won't fix long wait times—and may make them worse

A new analysis published in NEJM Catalyst finds that the standard response to growing specialist wait times—hiring more physicians—is unlikely to solve the problem on its own and may even worsen it. The article, "Reducing Specialist Wait Times: What Can We Learn from Highway Traffic Engineers?," draws a direct parallel between specialist scheduling and highway congestion, where adding lanes fails to ease traffic because drivers simply adjust their behavior to take advantage of the new capacity.

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