Board Seeks to Revoke Doctor’s License

A prominent South County psychiatrist has been accused by state officials of repeatedly having sex with a female patient and prescribing narcotics to another patient in exchange for cash.

The petition filed by the California Medical Board in Sacramento seeks to revoke the medical license of Dr. Irwin I. Rosenfeld, former president of the Orange County Psychiatric Society. The board accuses the Laguna Hills doctor of gross negligence, corruption, making false statements and incompetence.

The petition accuses Rosenfeld of having sex three years ago with a patient in his office, sometimes while she was under hypnosis.

Rosenfeld referred inquiries to his attorney, David Rosner, who said the doctor would fight all the charges.

“He is very well known and very well regarded,” Rosner said. The case, he said, is “unwarranted, and he denies it.”

Rosenfeld, 47, was licensed in California in 1977 and was on the faculty of the UC Irvine College of Medicine from 1981 to 1995. He practices in Laguna Hills and also is on the staff at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center.

The medical board’s allegations, filed Aug. 13, involve a woman now 33 and a male patient, now 39, who suffered from manic depression.

The board accuses the doctor of “repeated acts of clearly excessive prescribing” the narcotic Demerol for the man from 1992 to 1994. It also accuses Rosenfeld of “dishonestly accepting” $5,000 from the patient “in return for which [he] essentially prescribed Demerol.”

The petition also accuses him of “corruption” and alleges he had business dealings with the man. Those dealings, according to the petition, include renting a residence from the patient and participating with him in an auto leasing company from which the doctor was supposed to realize a $150,000 profit.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Steven Zeigen, who filed the petition on behalf of the board, said rules of psychiatry prohibit “multiple relationships” between patient and doctor.

“You are not the lover, not a friend, not a business associate. You are a therapist, and that’s all,” Zeigen said.

The petition says Rosenfeld met the second patient in 1994 at a Mission Viejo hospital, where the woman was being treated for suicidal thoughts and a schizoid disorder, and diagnosed a probable sexual addiction.

He treated her 22 times at his office from November 1994 to March 1995. During several of those sessions, he hypnotized her and she performed oral sex or had intercourse or other sexual activity with him, according to the board’s accusation.

It also accuses him of contributing $1,800 toward the woman’s breast enlargement surgery and telling her “he would spend time with her when his wife was on vacation,” the papers say.

The woman “became increasingly suicidal” and there was a “deterioration in her mental state,” according to the document.

Both cases resulted in civil suits, at least one of which was settled out of court, said lawyers involved in the cases.