Dodgy Florida Pain Doc Launches New Teen Center

Addiction Treatment Industry Newswire

07/13/2013 –ATIN – A notorious Delray Beach pain doc who last year was identified as among the nation’s top 50 prescribers of Oxycodone in a state document ordering the emergency suspension of his medical license has this year apparently reinvented himself as a savior of addicted teens. Founding and appointing himself CEO of a rather large Florida Model adolescent addiction treatment center called Good Future Teen Rehab, Dr. Basim Elhabashy is identified on the center’s website as a “certified detox physician” on call “24/7 for any emergency that could happen to any of his [Good Future Teen] patients,” adding that “Dr. Elhabashy will also be able to manage any other medical problems the patients might have.”

Emergency Suspension

Good Future Teen Rehab makes these claims about Dr. Elhabashy’s capabilities and functions at the treatment center despite a May 2012 Order of Emergency Suspension of the doctor’s medical license by then interim Florida Surgeon General Steven Harris, an order that gave Dr. Elhabashy a 30-day window for judicial review and appeal. While the state Dept. of Health could not immediately confirm if the suspension is still in effect and Dr. Elhabashy was not immediately available for comment, the 46-page document accompanying the suspension order not only identifies Elhabashy as a careless and voluminous prescriber of Oxycodone – the DEA says he purchased 287,000 pills in 2010, making him the nation’s 48^th largest Oxycodone buyer – but he also doled out a long list of other highly addictive drugs including Demerol, Diluadid, Xanax and many others. While Good Future Teen Rehab portrays Dr. Elhabashy as a caring competent physician worthy of being entrusted the care of deeply troubled addicted teens – arguably the most at risk census type to be found anywhere in medicine – last year Surgeon General Steven Harris had a starkly different portrayal, describing Dr. Elhabashy as “medically incompetent while lacking in good moral character in his keenness to prescribe dangerous drugs with an almost complete indifference for the safety of his patients.“

Three Houses

Good Future Teen Rehab appears to employ the partial hospitalization approach commonly known as the Florida Model. With clinical offices in Delray Beach, the center’s website shows pictures of three luxury homes the youths apparently reside in while in treatment with a capacity that appears to be in the 30-40 bed range, a very large Florida Model op especially for one focused on teens. If done properly and responsibly, teen care is by far the most clinically labor intensive addictions specialty with the very best and most expensive centers often instituting 2-to-1 staff patient ratios and sometimes even higher.

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