The license of Boulder psychiatrist David K. Rosenthal has been put on probation and his practice will be monitored for five years under the terms of disciplinary action taken recently by the Colorado Medical Board.
In its Stipulation and Final Agency Order dated July 24, 2018, the Board found Rosenthal substituted telephone calls for several in-person appointments with a patient whose mental health symptoms and condition were too severe for it, and failed to meet with the patient regularly to ensure he was safely prescribing drugs to him.
This is the third public disciplinary action taken against Rosenthal by a state medical board, one of which led to the surrender of his California medical license.
According to Medical Board of California disciplinary documents, Rosenthal admitted that in 2000, he had sexual relations with a female patient who was seeking treatment from him after reportedly being sexually assaulted by her landlord.
Rosenthal was convicted in 2001 in Sacramento County Superior Court of misdemeanor sexual battery and sexual exploitation. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail and three-year probation, during which time he was ordered not to treat females or minor children. He was also ordered to get sexual abuse counseling and pay restitution to his victim.
Rosenthal subsequently surrendered his California medical license in 2002.
In April 2003, he applied to reactivate his Colorado medical license, which had been inactive since 1993. In November 2003, the Colorado Medical Board granted him a restricted license to work only at correctional facilities because “the oversight inherent in the practice of medicine in the correctional system will adequately protect the public.” He was also required to complete a course on maintaining personal boundaries.
In September 2004, Rosenthal requested that the restrictions be modified. The Medical Board agreed in October 2004 to a five-year stipulation, limiting his license to patient evaluations and medication management. He was required to disclose to his patients that he had been disciplined by the Board for sexual contact with a patient and that such contact is “inappropriate under any circumstances.”
He was also required to continue treatment as determined by the Colorado Physician Health Program, which monitored his practice and his treatment of patients, in particular “those patients who might trigger vulnerabilities leading to boundary violations” by Rosenthal.
The restrictions expired in October 2009.
In May 2016, Rosenthal was again disciplined with a letter of admonition from the Colorado Medical Board. It found that in his treatment of a patient, he failed to consider alternative and more appropriate medications to treat the patient’s anxiety, failed to properly address the tapering of the patient’s Xanax, inappropriately prescribed Neurontin on an unsupervised basis (to help with Xanax withdrawal seizures), and failed to address the PTSD he had diagnosed in the patient.
The Board decided not to start formal proceedings against his license at that time.
Rosenthal’s current probation with practice monitoring extends to July 2023.
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