Enforcing good health.

• Author: LUSKY, MARK
• Position: Brief Article

Twenty years after heading Denver's hospitals, Dr. Abraham Kauvar overhauls the U.S. health care system

From head of hospitals to chief of hospital police, Dr. Abraham Kauvar always set his sights on improving public health. Now, headquartered in a nondescript office near Denver's Rose Hospital, he's an architect hatching an ambitious national health care program.

Dr. Kauvar has accumulated considerable credentials. He prefers not to discuss age but says he completed his medical training in 1942. Denver's Health and Hospitals chief from 1972 to 1979, Kauvar designed and implemented the nation's first comprehensive neighborhood-based public health clinic network. Offering universal access at little or no cost, the system has spread to major U.S. cities and several foreign countries, typically with Kauvar's guidance.

The neighborhood system features three levels of care. Tier One is community preventive medicine outreach, a novel form of house calls. In the first year of Denver's program, "We reduced teenage pregnancies by 15 percent," Kauvar said.

Tier Two comprises satellite clinics located throughout the metro area. These clinics can provide care for less serious matters.

Tier Three is the city's primary hospital facility, Denver Health Medical Center, where the most serious cases go.

Now, Kauvar is working on conquering the next level. His big idea would conceptualize on a national scale what he materialized in major metropolitan areas -- an economically viable universal health care access system.

Kauvar's had a lot of practice. In 1979, then-Mayor Ed Koch lured him away from Denver to head that New York city's hospitals -- and serve as the badge-carrying chief of NYC hospital police. Kauvar targeted a key portion of a $2...