The Medical Board of California recently suspended a Poway surgeon’s medical license on allegations that he pocketed his patients’ pain pills during office visits.
An order dated Sept. 17 accuses Dr. Jacob W. Husseman, a board-certified otolaryngologist, of taking oxycodone pills in August and November of 2025 when patients’ family members filled prescriptions to manage pain after ear, nose and throat surgeries. The license suspension is temporary. Husseman will have a chance to argue for reinstatement through the medical board’s hearing process.
Findings state that the physician resigned in early December shortly after his employer, UC San Diego Health, suspended him following reports of drug diversion from two individuals.
Speaking through his attorney, Kevin Murphy, the physician noted that the license suspension is an interim action subject to a hearing at which he will get a chance to refute the medical board’s statements.
“Dr. Husseman takes seriously the concerns about prior prescription-medication use described in the public interim order,” Murphy said in an email sent Monday. “He does not admit to the allegations, but he is respecting the interim suspension order while continuing treatment, monitoring, and drug testing, with documented negative results beginning December 16, 2025.
“He retains the right to request an expedited hearing after the Accusation is filed. He will address the disputed issues through the Board’s disciplinary process, and is declining to comment further at this time.”
UCSD Health stated in an email that it does not comment on confidential personnel matters but confirmed his hiring in June 2023 and departure in December 2025.
According to the order, the husband of a patient who underwent surgery on Aug. 13, 2025, subsequently met with the doctor to discuss prescribed medications.
The document says that Husseman “handled the medications and opened the sealed bag containing oxycodone. After their meeting, the oxycodone prescription contained only 24 of the 30 prescribed pills.”
The order details a second encounter where the doctor asked the same patient whose husband interacted with Husseman on Aug. 13 to bring her medications with her to a postoperative visit on Aug. 20, 2025, at which he allegedly “counted the pills, took the remaining ones, and told the patient they would be ‘taken to the infirmary.’“
Husseman, the order says, told the medical board’s investigator in an email that he did not keep the meds, but rather “personally discarded them into pharmaceutical waste.”
A third incident involves a patient who had surgery on Nov. 24, 2025. In this case, the medical board says the doctor met, apparently that same day, with his patient’s mother to discuss prescribed medications and that, after handling the items, “the oxycodone prescription contained only 50 of the 60 prescribed pills.”
The third scenario, the medical board states, was captured by UC San Diego Health security video cameras, showing the patient’s father receiving the bagged drugs from a pharmacist, handing the bag to the patient’s mother without opening it, and then the parcel being handed to Husseman “when he arrived in the lobby area.”
An investigator who interviewed the mother said that the family members subsequently met with the doctor in a nearby consultation room where he “squatted on the floor and placed the paper bag containing the medications on the floor in front of her.”
Husseman, the order says, “had both of his hands in the bag as he asked her questions. The mother heard pills rattling around and saw (him) take his right hand out of the bag and put something in his right back pocket.”
Video, the order states, showed the doctor leaving a consultation room after meeting with the couple for about seven minutes “with one of his hands in a fist,” then “walking down a hallway with one hand still in a fist, subsequently bending down toward the area of his pant leg and shoe, and then stand up with his hand no longer in a fist.”
A drug test on Nov. 25, the order says, was positive for oxycodone, which Husseman told UC San Diego Health was due to self-treatment of a recent knee injury with Percocet left over “from a tonsillectomy he had a few years ago.”
Husseman told investigators he completed a 10-week intensive outpatient treatment program in early 2026 and that his opioid use became “problematic approximately 10 years prior to the evaluation,” gradually evolving from “legitimate medical treatment into an opioid use disorder.”
After UCSD Health initiated an investigation into the patient complaints, Husseman voluntarily enrolled in treatment, his attorney said.
“He has continued proactive treatment and independent rehabilitation, including professional group meetings, individual counseling, psychiatric follow-up, AA and SMART Recovery meetings, a sponsor, and independent monitoring with random drug testing,” Murphy said. “He has documented negative results beginning December 16, 2025, through the present.”
According to the medical board order, Husseman’s therapist wrote that he is “seven months clean and sober” and is “emotionally and mentally stable enough to return to work as a physician on a part-time basis at 20 hours per week.”