Pediatrician loved career with children

"Are you going to be an MD or a doctor?"

That odd question was posed decades ago to Dr. William Grattan, who had just returned to the Albany Diocese to open a private practice in Waterford after serving in World War II and completing his training as a pediatrician.

The older physician who demanded an answer before leaving on vacation and allowing his young counterpart to cover his patients struck a chord with Dr. Grattan. The difference between an MD and a doctor, he said, is that a doctor takes a real interest in what he does and "tries to do something worthwhile for people."

Serving people

"I've always wanted to be a doctor," Dr. Grattan mused on a recent afternoon, glancing at paperwork strewn over the desk in his tiny Cohoes office. "The reason I went into medicine is that I was curious about how people worked."

His interest resulted in a career of teaching, administration and, always, treating children.

He has served as Albany County's health commissioner, a medical consultant for the Albany County Health Department, a professor of pediatrics at Albany Medical College, and a board member for a host of health and cultural groups. Today, he is chief medical officer for the Seton Health System.

Going on

Last fall, the senior citizen was looking forward to retirement when he heard that Seton Health was planning to close its Cohoes family health center for financial reasons. He abruptly changed his plans.

Instead of concluding his medical career, he went back into private practice, taking over the Cohoes center from Seton to ensure it stayed open. (He sublets half the space for pediatric offices; Dr. Renu Gupta rents the other side, seeing adults in her practice.)

Having kept a hand in clinical work at the center for many years, "I knew most of the patients here," explained, Dr. Grattan, who is a member of Christ Sun of Justice parish in Troy. He also knew the center's small staff -- a nurse practitioner who now shares office space with him, an R.N. and an office manager he calls "really excellent people."

'Fun' profession

Dr. Grattan thinks his reasons for saving the center are anything but altruistic.

"It's a selfish motive," he admitted. "Working with kids is fun! Watching kids develop from little babies who really can't do very much to very interesting people and working with families is very exciting."

A high percentage of his practice is families covered by Medicaid or Medicaid managed care, which reimburse physicians for their services at a much lower rate than commercial insurers do. Dr. Grattan refuses to turn any of them away.

"It's a little bit of a challenge to keep our heads above water," he told The Evangelist, "but we're doing it."

Goals

The work of a pediatrician in a small, blue-collar town is complex. Dr. Grattan said he has had some success in keeping his young patients away from smoking, but he wishes he could "make a dent" in the trend toward obesity, now appearing even among infants and children. He is also concerned about the increase in asthma in children.

He spends a lot of his time working on prevention efforts, educating parents about the dangers of improperly installed car seats, and hazards for children like falls and burns.

With older kids, he talks frankly about the risks of careless driving, sex and alcohol or drug use.

Getting lead out

An authority on lead poisoning in children, Dr. Grattan is quick to turn a discussion of his work to that subject. He noted that lead was supposedly removed from houses around 1970 (when it stopped being used as an ingredient in paint), but most houses in older neighborhoods were built long before then and still have lead paint.

"Lead tends to get into the dust in the house and into flakes of paint that children might eat," resulting in damage to the nervous system, said the pediatrician. "No level of lead is really harmless."

Although screenings of one- and two-year-olds, and instructions for parents to clean without stirring up dust and to wash children's hands have resulted in lowering incidents of lead poisoning, Dr. Grattan worries that parents' concern about lead being a problem is dropping just as fast.

The only real solution is to replace the homes that have lead paint with new houses, and the pediatrician doesn't believe that will happen while the U.S. is focused on the war in Iraq, "spending trillions of dollars conquering the world."

Staying on

Dr. Grattan hopes to eventually persuade another pediatrician to join him so that he can "transition" to retirement. "Nobody lives forever. At some point, I'll probably be forced by Father Time to knock it off!" he joked.

Still, Dr. Grattan is determined not to let Cohoes lose an important site for medical care.

"I believe in the message of Christ's two most important commandments: Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor," he stated. "We have an obligation to love one another and do something to make the world a little better."

(Dr. Grattan was born in Brady Maternity Hospital in Albany, which is now the diocesan Pastoral Center. His father, who owned a contracting business in Cohoes, built many edifices near where the doctor now works, including the post office, waterworks and the Bridge Avenue bridge. His practice is accepting new patients; call 233-9500. To contact Dr. Renu Gupta, call 235-1119.)

Lifetime service honored

Last week, Dr. Grattan received the Caritas award for lifetime service from Seton Health, which noted his "exceptional efforts to foster better working relationships between Seton Health and the communities it serves."

The pediatrician was pleased to get the award from an organization he sees as "very progressive."

He recalled that when he had a private practice in Waterford in the 1970s with Dr. Martin Szymanski, the pair were treating so many Medicaid patients that they could not keep afloat financially, so they approached hospitals in the area about providing community health care for such low-income families.

"The one hospital that accepted us was St. Mary's," said Dr. Grattan. "Sister Mary Agnes O'Neil was the president and administrator, and her response was, 'Sure, let's do it.' So getting an award from [Seton] is very gratifying." (KB)

(10/7/04)