Here’s why a Florida doctor got banned from female patients and controlled substances
Just three weeks after Deerfield Beach’s Dr. Sameh Wahba got his Florida license, the New York State Department of Health filed a complaint charging him with incompetence, negligence, sex with a patient and prescribing addictive drugs to seven patients without documented reason.
Wahba gave up his New York license, claiming he “could not successfully defend at least one of the charges.” Three years and seven months later, Florida’s Board of Medicine disciplined Wahba.
A final order that posted July 25 fined Wahba $2,500 and “permanently restricted” him from seeing female patients and prescribing controlled substances. He also has to complete two five-hour continuing medical education courses.
Once the New York State Department of Health accepted Wahba’s license surrender in December 2019, it counted as an action against his license. By state statutes, that opened the door for the Florida Board of Medicine to discipline the former New York psychiatrist.
Wahba hasn’t responded to a Miami Herald email nor a phone message left with an immediate family member.
Wahba’s LinkedIn page lists his location as Boca Raton, while his official Florida license address has been changed to the Deerfield Beach home that online Broward County records say he bought for $3.1 million this past Valentine’s Day. That license profile also falsely claims that Wahba is still licensed in New York.
When the Florida Department of Health filed the administrative complaint that started this discipline process in February 2022, Wahba still listed his license address as his Port Jefferson, New York, office.
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New York relationships and substances
Wahba became licensed in New York in 1994 and did a two-year residency in forensic psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. He practiced in the Long Island town of Port Jefferson, then received his license to practice in Florida on Aug. 13, 2019.
An administrative complaint was filed against Wahba’s New York license 21 days later, Sept. 3, 2019. It charged Wahba with “moral unfitness; gross negligence; gross incompetence; negligence on more than one occasion; incompetence on more than one occasion and failing to maintain accurate patient medical records.”
The New York administrative complaint says Wahba strayed from proper medical practices with seven patients, mostly from 2014 through 2018. Two of the patients were married. Most of the doctor-patient relationships lasted less than two years, although one was 6 1/2 years, and Wahba treated another patient from 2001 through 2016.
Though the listed ethical violation allegations vary from patient to patient, each list says Wahba failed to have an “appropriate medical rationale” for prescribing “controlled substance medications with high-risk for misuse.”
Those substances include Adderall, antipsychotic drug Orap, opioid buprenorphine and anti-anxiety drugs Klonopin and Xanax.
Accusations of bad behavior with a patient to whom Wahba allegedly prescribed Adderall and Xanax without reason and “engaging in an inappropriate, sexualized relationship.”
Wahba responded by surrendering his license on Dec. 18, 2019. His letter requesting permission to surrender said: “I assert that I cannot successfully defend against at least one of the acts of misconduct alleged in full satisfaction of the charges against me.”
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