SALINAS VALLEY — Mee Memorial Healthcare System has hired a new orthopedist who promises a hands-on, holistic approach to treating patients in South Monterey County.
A New York native who most recently practiced in Southern California, Dr. Adam Holleran will see patients in both the King City and Greenfield clinics.
Holleran is a qualified medical evaluator, certified by the Division of Workers’ Compensation Medical Unit to examine injured workers to evaluate disability and write medical-legal reports. He lived and worked in Orange County and the San Diego area for years until he and his fiancé, originally from Watsonville, decided to reevaluate their lives and move nearer to her family following the pandemic.
Holleran was drawn to specialize in orthopedics because he observed that in more general disciplines “patients are often handed off to surgeons to complete the healing process,” he said. “I wanted to be able to treat patients more holistically and see them through their illness and to provide the ultimate solutions.”
Growing up in upstate New York, Holleran lived an active lifestyle in the outdoors and playing organized sports, with a future in orthopedics a natural segue.
He believes the practice feels more objective and logical than others.
“When you’re able to show a patient an X-ray that demonstrates their pain is caused by bone-on-bone friction, it’s easy to understand the problem and it’s also more cut-and-dry to fix it — less theoretical,” said Holleran, who likes the objective, practical nature of the specialty. “There’s an instant gratification to fixing a problem, which makes it much more satisfying.”
From the town of Binghamton, N.Y., about halfway between Syracuse and Scranton, Penn., he finished his undergraduate work in Philadelphia before attending medical school at Drexel University.
Having family in Southern California, Holleran decided to expand his horizons and completed residency at the UC Irvine Medical Center. With a thirst for international experience, he later applied for a fellowship abroad.
Ensuring that his overseas work would translate to future work in the United States, he spent a year in the South Pacific practicing hip and knee arthroplasty in Dunedin, New Zealand.
“It was a place almost the size of California, with the population of L.A.; there were more sheep than human beings,” he said jokingly.
A student of Spanish in high school and college, Holleran was able to improve his language skills while working in Southern California.
“I was not treating the average Newport Beach clientele,” he said. “Instead I was seeing regular, working-class people,” which he found he preferred. “I found my patients to be appreciative, kind and maybe even more motivated to get well and go back to work. I found I could make more of a difference. This was also the appeal of Mee Memorial.”
A food lover and accomplished cook, Holleran has, on occasion, let people know that he’s “easily bribed with food!” Some of his patients have responded by gifting him fresh, homemade dishes from different cultures — which he loves.
