by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | June 28, 2019
From the June 2019 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Dr. John Warner has a knack for keeping busy as a medical professional. He is the executive vice president for Health System Affairs at UT Southwestern Medical Center, the immediate past president of the American Heart Association and a practicing interventional cardiologist who regularly treats patients. With that background provided, we appreciate the time he took to speak with HCB News.
HCB News: What inspired you to follow a career in healthcare?
Dr. John Warner: I’m an outdoor person and always enjoyed being outside. I thought I’d be a forest ranger. Instead, I became the first physician in my family. I’m an interventional cardiologist by original career destination. I went to college thinking I would do something in science, but my father was an accountant and had a large accounting firm with lots of physicians for clients. So I was around a lot of doctors growing up and with my interest in science, my father’s friends and customers really inspired me to consider a career in medicine, and off I went.
Contemporary architecture greets patients in the lobby
of Clements University Hospital
HCB News: How long have you been with UT Southwestern?
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JW: It’s been 16 years.
HCB News: What drew you to UT Southwestern?
JW: I had trained here in the early 1990s. I did my internal medicine residency and was chief resident here, then went off to Duke for my cardiology and interventional cardiology training. I joined the faculty there, then was recruited back here.
I think the things I like most about UT Southwestern is that it’s a very innovative place. It’s a very flat organization, with a very collegial approach to collaboration. Team success is always rewarded more than individual success. It’s an interesting place. It’s an organization that’s founded on its scientific underpinnings, so there’s a culture of discovery that I find is very invigorating.
HCB News: What kind of challenges does the organization have?
UT Southwestern integrates its pioneering biomedical
research with clinical care and education
JW: I think a lot of organizations are moving along with this idea about caring for a population of patients and addressing the value proposition in healthcare; of being rewarded financially and reputationally more for an outcome than for a series of procedures or encounters. So it’s really focusing on quality and delivering that quality at an appropriate cost. I think that’s the challenge we’re all facing.
