Coram Healthcare to Move to Denver, Cut Staff by 590

James M. Sweeney, who engineered the March sale of McGaw Inc. to Ivax Corp., is taking his recently formed health-care company to Denver at the end of the month as it sheds 590 employees--or 21% of its 2,800-member work force--from facilities across the country.

The layoffs at Coram Healthcare Corp., formed July 11 in a four-way merger Sweeney put together, are part of a broad restructuring that includes closing 83 facilities and taking a third-quarter pretax charge of $138.1 million.

Coram’s headquarters are temporarily in the Newport Beach offices of its lawyers, mainly because Sweeney lives in Orange County. But a company spokeswoman said he and about a dozen other employees constituting the headquarters staff will be leaving for new offices in Denver in three weeks.

Coram was created from the mergers of Curaflex Health Services Inc. in Ontario, T2 Medical Inc. in Atlanta, HealthInfusion Inc. in Miami and Medisys Inc. in Edina, Minn.