Canton Doctor Partners with UConn Health Center

This article first appeared on UConn Today, which has granted permission for it to be reprinted. 

Dr. Richard Abraham has been a fixture in Canton for nearly four decades. His internal medicine office, prominently located at 141 Dowd Ave., is in a renovated home dating back to the 18th century. Fitting this setting, Abraham’s patient practices also date back to some time-honored colonial traditions.

“Occasionally, I have gotten paid in raw milk or firewood. I have always made house calls and still do when patients cannot or should not leave their homes, “says Abraham.

This extraordinary concern for his patients is why he decided to unite his practice with the UConn Health Center.

“I wanted to assure continuity of care to the patients in the Farmington Valley whom I have had the honor to serve,” says Abraham.

Now that Abraham has joined the Health Center, his patients will benefit from the support of the entire UConn team.

“Dr. Abraham is a valuable addition to the UConn Health Center,” says Dr. Denis Lafreniere, interim director of the UConn Medical Group. “We are very excited to have the opportunity to better serve the Canton area and grow with an area that has already grown so much.”

Abraham has been part of the clinical faculty at UConn for 37 years. Patients of Dr. Abraham were once limited by their insurance. Now, his office will be able to see patients with all insurances accepted by the Health Center. The office also plans to expand with another physician in the future to see more patients from Canton and the neighboring towns.

Abraham was raised in northern New Jersey. He completed his undergraduate degree at Dartmouth College and went to medical school at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He trained at Montefiore Medical Center in New York before serving as a physician in the Army in Munich, Germany. He trained in Internal Medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock in New Hampshire.

In 1976, he opened his private practice in Canton, just across the street from his current location. His wife, Judy, is a physical therapist in another part of his current office.

Abraham says he moved to Canton a few years after the closing of the Collins Axe Factory when the local economy was at a low point and has watched the growth of Canton into an artsy town with solid values.

“I decided to open practice in Connecticut because I thought it would be a good place to live, work and raise a family,” says Abraham. “And I was right.”