When Dr. Jochen Reiser took over as chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at Rush from the renowned Dr. Stuart Levin, he found his predecessor had left some items for him in his office.
Among several pieces of memorabilia was a photograph of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which Reiser said perfectly encapsulated Levin’s approach to not just medicine, but life.
“That was him, he is one who wanted to break walls down and connect people, and he did that in his very well-spoken and intense way,” Reiser said. “He had the passion and the strongest and best intentions behind his actions.”
Mr. Levin’s illustrious career as a physician and educator at Rush University Medical Center spanned nearly five decades and saw him take on various leadership roles. He helped transform the hospital, his colleagues said, and he always placed a patient’s needs above everything else.
Mr. Levin died at Rush on Dec. 4 following an illness. He was 88.
Mr. Levin was known as one of Chicago’s best diagnosticians — a doctor who specializes in identifying conditions in patients — and was routinely asked to weigh in on medical cases that could not be solved.
He was appointed the first-ever director of the Section of Infectious Diseases at Rush in 1969 and later chaired the Department of Internal Medicine from 1991 until his retirement in 2012.
In 1986, he was appointed the first James R. Lowenstein Professor of Medicine. Mr. Levin was also vice dean of Rush Medical College and an associate vice president for medical affairs.
But Mr. Levin’s accomplishments stretched beyond the Rush campus and into the city, particularly the West Side where he lived for the duration of his career.
He cared deeply about access to care for the underserved, and was a vocal champion of the rights of people with HIV and AIDS to get treatment regardless of their ability to pay.
Mr. Levin was at the forefront of the creation of the Ruth M. Rothstein CORE Center, one of the nation’s leading treatment centers for people living with HIV/AIDS.
“He was a moral and ethical leader who always did the right thing no matter what the opposition was to it, and that sort of moral and ethical mentorship was maybe his most critical,” said Dr. David Ansell, senior vice president of community health equity at Rush.
“He grew up in some of the same West Side neighborhoods of the patients he ended up treating afterwards,” Ansell added. “So he didn’t forget his roots and never forgot the plight of the common woman and man.”
Ansell also credited Mr. Levin with being one of the first to give nurses more authority in patient care.
“If there was ever a very sick patient, he didn’t want to delay getting that patient to the ICU, so he empowered the nurses on the floor if they were worried about a patient to send the patient to the ICU,” Ansell said. “That was not practiced in any other institution that I know of.”
In 2008 Rush established the Stuart Levin, MD, Professorship, which provides financial support for medical students at Rush University. Mr. Levin consistently supported the fund since it was established.
Reiser said Mr. Levin was also a mentor for generations and was always available to share great bits of advice, or offer perspective on an issue, even after he retired. Reiser remembers one moment early on in his time as the new chair of internal medicine where he sought Mr. Levin’s help.
During one of their regular phone calls Reiser mentioned that some staff members were hesitant to get on board with changes he was making as their new chair.
Mr. Levin said he that he would take care of it, and met with those members, reminding them of their mission as healthcare providers and the impact they have on people’s lives.
“Who does that, right? Who does that after retirement?” Reiser said. “He took accountability, and said I should have prepared them differently before you came and because of this, let me help you now to address it.”
Reiser said one of the factors that made Mr. Levin such an accomplished diagnostician was the sheer breadth of his knowledge.
“He had the clinical experience because he was so involved with complicated cases that he was very fast arriving at the diagnosis,” Reiser said. “Remember, this was the time when people couldn’t look anything up. You had your knowledge and maybe you could read about something in a book, but you couldn’t go online and Google something.”
Reiser stepped down as chair in August, and Mr. Levin spoke at his farewell ceremony even though his health was declining. Reiser is now president of the University of Texas Medical Branch.
In 2016, Mr. Levin received the Trustee Medal, Rush’s highest honor, for his longtime support of Rush’s mission and dedication to Chicago and beyond.
“For those of us who knew him we would say he was among the greatest doctors in America,” Ansell said.
Mr. Levin is survived by his wife and several children and grandchildren. Services have been held.
