Howard Hiatt

wrote on June 28, 2018

Recruiting Warner from the U of Wisconsin Hospital was among my most important achievements as Chairman of the Dept of Medicine at Beth Israel Hospital. He, of course, organized and directed our program in statistics and medicine and developed the use of computers for our department, resulting in an approach adopted by at least one other Harvard teaching hospital. Residents and medical students learned from him and from the very impressive colleagues that he recruited, nurtured and developed in his division. I was often told by colleagues in other medical schools and teaching hospitals how much they admired and benefited from the work of Warner and his colleagues. His pupils were not limited to the medical profession: a Brookline High School student who later became a journalist told me that "Warner taught me how to ask questions." When Don Berwick and I decided to give up teaching the course on the nation's health care problems and systems that we had organized for Harvard undergraduates, Warner took it on and ran it for several years. (The course continues and is still oversubscribed every year.) I can mention all of these things, but I cannot adequately describe how meaningful my personal relationship with Warner was to me. When I had a medical problem, Warner was there to ask how he could help. I cherished his friendship. The relationship with Warner led, of course, to a relationship with wonderful Caroline. How lucky I was and am.