tom delbanco

wrote on July 3, 2018

Warner Slack was a very close and good friend. He was one of fewer than 15 full time faculty in medicine assembled by Howard Hiatt at the former Beth Israel Hospital in the late 1960s, and he interviewed me when I was applying to lead the new primary care efforts. Always a twinkle in his eye, ready to argue any point, focused, but also a fine listener and (to a degree) willing to compromise! As an example of his wonderful values, he and his long-term colleague, Howard Bleich, bridled at what they perceived as injustice, and that included the way medicine chose its trainees. Their studies were early in pointing out that we'd probably do just as well with a lottery... Warner's thoughts about "patient power" affected much of my academic life. He was a great supporter of OpenNotes and our new adventure ( "OurNotes") with patients and clinicians co-generating medical notes. What a wonderful man he was...such loss to the field and to many, many friends...