A former colleague of Dr. William Balash won’t ever fail to remember the cold night in January quite a long while prior when he got a call at 2 a.m.
One of Balash’s patients was in the emergency unit Allegheny Valley Hospital. He wasn’t progressing admirably.
“Dr. Balash cared about his patients very deeply. Everybody says they care about their patients. but he really did,” said Allegheny Health Network cardiologist Dr. Venkatraman Srinivasan. “He would call me at all hours of the day and night inquiring about his patients that I was also involved in taking care of in the hospital.
“I got dressed and drove down to the hospital. And who was standing there before me, all dressed up in a suit and being with the patient — it was Dr. Balash, at 2 in the morning.”
Balash had known the patient for quite a while and he needed to be there, even as the man was kicking the bucket, Srinivasan said.
Dr. William R. Balash, a doctor who had the core of an old nation specialist and a brain resolved to stay aware of the most recent improvements in medication, passed on April 13. He was 90.
Balash rehearsed interior medication for more than 50 years in the Alle-Kiski Valley. He had a private practice situated in Harrison where he really focused on many patients around the area. He stood firm on a few administration footings at Allegheny Valley Hospital, including leader of the clinical staff.
He resigned in 2010 however continued contemplating and kept up his clinical permit until last December.
“Before he retired, he worked 24/7 and 365 days a year,” Srinivasan said. “Unless he was out of town, he took all his calls day and night, day after day. That doesn’t happen these days.”
Balash even made house calls.
“He was from Leechburg (orginally) and he would go up to Leechburg and Vandergrift to do house calls on patients in the evening,” said Harrison osteopath Dr. Darrell Petz. “He’d take an EKG machine with him and off he went. This was after his office hours and he worked hard.
“He was a very kind, caring man. He worked until he was 80. That’s a long time.”
Balash was brought up in Leechburg, the child of Irene and Joseph Balash. He got keen on medication at a youthful age. In the wake of going to drug store school for a year, he chose to consider science. Subsequent to getting his four year education in science certificate from Allegheny College in 1952, Balash procured his practitioner training from Georgetown University in 1956.
He finished residencies in inward medication at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and the Veterans Administration Hospital in Pittsburgh.
“Dr. Balash was a motivation and a good example for me,” said previous AVH doctor Dr. Malcolm Berger. “He was the encapsulation of the exemplary doctor; however in addition, he was an advanced one. He would see research examines, study the writing and keep on top of everything.”
Berger said Balash would resolutely remain with a case regardless of how troublesome.
““He would stay with a case and stay with it until he understood it. He helped so many people when other doctors would have just tossed in the towel,” Berger said. “He made diagnoses that saved people’s lives that would have otherwise been missed. It’s the kind of doctor he was.”
Also, when he got a misstep made by another specialist, Balash was extremely respectful by they way he dealt with it.
“One time I was writing some orders on one of his patients in the ICU and I did a calculation wrongly on some cardiac meds,” said dermatologist Dr. Jeffrey Weaver. “He called me into his office that night and it was late. He very graciously told me that I made a mistake and told me how to correct it. I’ll never forget that.”
In his extra time, Balash was an ardent golf player who likewise delighted in voyaging and investing energy at his bungalow along the Allegheny River.
He is made due by his significant other of 66 years, Theola; his girl Lisa, of Harrison; and child William Joseph of Hobe Sound, Fla.
Notwithstanding his folks, he was gone before in death by his sibling, Joseph.
A private assistance was held. Commemoration commitments can be made to the Balash Scholarship Fund at Washington and Jefferson College, 60 S. Lincoln St., Washington, PA 15301.
