Estate Gift from Grateful Physician Provides Resources for Cardiology

Dr. Janusz Subczynski at a 2013 Banyan Society Luncheon

Neurologist Janusz Subczynski credited the care he received at the NCH Heart Institute with extending his life. In gratitude he left a $1 million endowment in his estate that is being used to bring in renowned physicians to speak this year—among other enhancements.

Dr. Subczynski died in 2014 at the age of 85 after a long career as a neurologist and professor, including as chief of neurosurgery at St. John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit. A native of Poland, he experienced the horrors of German occupation during World War II as a young emergency room physician and in 2006 published a book titled In the Shadow of Satan.

In 1998 Dr. Subczynski retired to Marco Island, Florida, and subsequently became a patient of NCH cardiologist Dr. Herman Spilker. After establishing his estate gift and joining the NCH Healthcare Foundation’s Banyan Society, a group for those making planned gifts, Dr. Subczynski urged others to make gifts of gratitude, saying, “If they do something good, it will be the best thing for them because they will have a feeling of joy.”

Dr. Subczynski said that when a gift helps medical treatments to become modernized, it does more than change the way patients receive care: It also changes the life of the gift giver. His endowment is specifically directed for invasive cardiology. This year the funds allowed for advanced educational programs, new technology, and enhanced services and medical techniques. They also allowed NCH to bring to Naples an internationally renowned professor of cardiology at NYU for an education session with physicians and nurses. Other speakers who will lecture include a pioneer inventor of the cardiac stent and a highly regarded cardiologist from UCLA.