I really like this suggestion, I just want to play devils advocate in order to hopefully refine your idea a bit. My first thought was if having a single click and a hotkey would be different enough from right click and another click to be worth even trying to change? I would instead expand on your idea, to using number keys to specify a unit (ship or station doesn't matter) and tapping a second time to switch to it. So, designating a random station in a high traffic system at 1 (even though it might be really far away, offscreen, thus not listed), would automatically bring the window to THAT designated station, and tapping again would automatically switch to it.
So to summarize:
You would set a hotkey 1-0 for a listed ship on the minimap.
Hitting 1 (for example) would automatically focus that ship as it mostly is already available.
Hitting 1 again, in quick succession, would automatically Switch to Ship.
You could add Shift or control modifiers in order to maintain your groupings of ships if desired(like, I set up 2 man groups for operations now. One ship is the miner/salvager/explorer/trader/ and one ship is the escort) or you could use it to specify 30 different ships/stations you can quickly get to.
I think I can see the benefit of your point in making a quicker way to access a ship when you don't know exactly that its the one you want until you see its position though. What would some of your thoughts in response be?