Fixing the Login Screen, Ignoring the Discharge Bottleneck
A real-world example of Time-saving bias in action
Context
A 300-bed regional hospital sought to improve clinician productivity and reduce after-hours charting. Leadership prioritized IT projects based on perceived clinician frustration and visible daily pain points.
Situation
The IT director proposed purchasing a biometric single sign-on (SSO) solution to speed electronic health record (EHR) logins after several clinicians complained about authentication delays. At the same time, a small workflow team recommended automating parts of the discharge paperwork that currently required manual data entry and phone calls to coordinate community services.
The bias in action
Decision-makers fixated on the highly visible annoyance of login delays and estimated the SSO would save 90 seconds per login — a figure influenced by memorable complaints rather than measurement. That estimated saving was multiplied across the number of clinicians and logins to produce a large projected time-savings headline. The longer, less frequent discharge tasks felt less salient and their time-savings were dismissed as 'marginal' per patient. No formal time-motion study was commissioned; the team relied on gut estimates and anecdotal reports.
Outcome
The hospital approved a $240,000 budget for SSO and implemented it over three months. Post-deployment measurement found average time saved per login was only 8–12 seconds (clinicians still paused for patient context checks and other steps), so actual aggregated time savings were one-tenth of the projected amount. Meanwhile, the discharge automation pilot—deferred for budget reasons—remained undone. Over nine months the hospital experienced continued discharge delays, increased length of stay for patients awaiting community referrals, and recurring overtime for case managers.
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