From MIT news (August 6, 2013)—    From theory to practice

“In work beginning with his master’s thesis, Xu has shown that having even a little flexibility in resources drastically improves wait times”:

I blogged about this in January 2010 relating it to ORs, but used the finance term ‘fungible’ to try to get the idea across. It was so obvious when actually doing it every day….that I forgot to alert MIT.

From ORTimes.ORG (January 27, 2010)—  From practice to theory – the fungible anesthetist

Expanding on the topic (July 14, 2010) —  the law of unintended consequences…staffing anesthesiologists

update 8/15/2013:  MIT news declined to publish my comments about prior research and articles. First  Aaron Swartz, now this … what’s up MIT, you were my favorite university.