Niazi Saifullah

The Progress-Index
How a doctor with a history of malpractice got away with running multiple group homes
Joyce Chu
February 20, 2023

PETERSBURG—In 2005, a Richmond psychiatrist met with his patient at a hotel and engaged in sexual activities, handing her liquor and medical drugs.

He ran a business that churned through dozens, at times over a hundred, patients a day—yet from at least 2011 to 2013, he didn’t see many of the patients himself. Instead, his other unlicensed staff members diagnosed and prescribed medicine for them, which would sometimes be the wrong dosage. They took the prescriptions to his office merely to have him sign off on them. Other times, he prescribed patients drugs without documenting or examining them, even upping their dosages without medical reasons.

At least one patient in his care died of a prescription opioid overdose.

This psychiatrist, Dr. Niazi Saifullah, would eventually have his license suspended twice by the Virginia Board of Medicine in 2006 and in 2013 after they conducted an extensive investigation into his business, all of which have been documented and made public…