Researchers postulate that at lower levels of multitasking, more idle time is incurred. Multitasking offers the opportunity to significantly reduce physician idle time and hence reduce the busy period duration. Once the physician is already operating at high levels of multitasking, idle times have been reduced or eliminated, and sources of waste associated with high levels of multitasking begin to play a more dominant role. In particular, the physician encounters greater setups, interruptions, and coordination losses. With excessive multitasking, any minor gains in idle time minimization are more than offset by the costs of task switching.