First, I am glad your father got the right advice and is recovering. That is what this all is supposed to be about.
That being said, it is inexcusable that the one minute of expertise took so much time and effort to receive. Our goal has to be to find ways to match need and expertise in much closer real time.
What troubles me most, though, is that the odds that a different expert might have given you a completely different opinion are much further away from zero than they should be, and there would be very little to help decide which was “right.”. In a system that relies so heavily on experts, their expertise shouldn’t be so subjective.