Litvak set aside 2 operating rooms just for urgent cases, leaving 18 open for scheduled procedures.

FORBES: Special Surgery

Anderson called in Eugene Litvak, a 57-year-old Boston University operations management expert who'd studied telecommunications in his native Russia.

FORBES: Special Surgery

"It is easier for practically every hospital to predict when somebody will break their leg than when someone will schedule surgery, " says Litvak.

FORBES: Special Surgery

Litvak's work also led to the creation of a "surgeon of the week, " who would clear his calendar solely to handle urgent appendectomies and bone-setting.

FORBES: Special Surgery

"It is easier for practically every hospital to predict when somebody will break their leg than when someone will schedule surgery, " Litvak lamented to Forbes in April.

FORBES: Scariest Hospital Risks

The biggest source of hospital waste, Litvak argues, is volatility.

FORBES: Special Surgery

Oddly--or sadly--enough, overcrowding in hospitals is actually the result not of sudden infectious outbreaks, but of the inefficient way surgeons book their operating rooms, says Eugene Litvak, a Boston University operations management expert.

FORBES: Scariest Hospital Risks

Litvak changed how the surgeons organized their lives.

FORBES: Special Surgery

Mr. Kardish mentioned that Anatole Litvak's "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" (1939), which will screen at MoMA, the first studio film to feature Nazis as villains, was heavily condemned by those who opposed a U.S. entry into World War II.

WSJ: Hollywood's German Influence | The Weimar Touch | Museum of Modern Art | By A.J. Goldmann