Kugel Samuel, MD

I referred a dear friend to Dr. Kugel. I went with her to her first appt. The office staff were friendly. Dr. Kugel was friendly and attentive. He has been my doctor for years and I wanted her to get the same help I had been getting. I have always had positive and therapeutic appointments. He is willing to try new approaches and is receptive to my ideas for new approaches as well.

It doesn’t surprise me to see this many bad reviews. This guy doesn’t belong in psychiatry. Do us ALL a favor and find another profession. He is a condescending, disrespectful waste of space. Why, you ask? I don’t think I need a reason, with all of these people backing me up ;)

Dr. Kugel is a motivated Physician. He has excellent professional acumen and is open to cogent discussion. I am a relatively new patient and there have been some long waits but, sometimes I’m the emergency. He treats many complicated patients and when he is with me his attention is on addressing my problems. The front office staff is courteous and efficient.

TERRIBLE. After waiting 6 weeks for an appointment, the original appt is rescheduled for a week later. Once at the office, that is in the WORST area, he is 2 hours late and then tells my son he does not treat ADD and won’t prescribe the meds, even though he almost out of meds because he waited 7 weeks to see this useless, uncaring jerk, doing no harm would have entailed at least prescribing a carry over script since his inept office took no info that would have prevented us wasting an entire day in the ghetto!!!

He’s not only rude, he’s a thief. He fraudulently billed my insurance for 9 visits in a three month period. I guess listening to messages from me telling me I need to see him counts as a visit. He does yell at the sweet woman working the front desk. It was so bad I let him know that he is having a negative impact on his patients. I also felt the need to thank her & let her know she’s really helpful, I felt so bad for her. He acted concerned, but after reading Sarah’s post I see nothing has changed. He took me off one medication cold turkey. My withdrawal symptoms were so bad my pharmacist called him & chewed him out and he authorized a refill. Please don’t put your wellness in this mans hands. There are many competent psychiatrists in San Diego and Dr Kugel is not one of them. If I could give him zero star rating, I would.

I woud not recommend this Dr, since he proved to be not only rude, terse and uncomfortable to interact with, but also condescending. Very poor people skills. Also, I have witnessed him interacting with other health care professionals in an unprofessional manner. It’s not comfortable witnessing when the dr is yelling at his staff…

I met with Kugel once in February of 2011, had an awful experience and never went back. I have Social Anxiety/​Panic Disorder and had just moved to San Diego so I was in need of a new psychiatrist. I had an appointment scheduled at 2:30 and had to wait in the waiting room until 4:30. When I finally went in to see him, he turned out to be completely insensitive. He was pushy, condescending and impatient. I had a panic attack in his office and left crying and feeling humiliated. He didn’t make me feel at ease or welcome or anything that a professional in the field of mental illness should. I left with a prescription for Lexapro that took about two weeks to fill because his staff forgot to forward the prescription to the pharmacy TWICE. Even the lady at the pharmacy told me that they always have problems with Kugel’s staff.