About Us

The American Board of Internal Medicine began offering a certification in rheumatology in 1971. By that time, a young doctor named Charles Kahn had already been treating rheumatic conditions in Hollywood, FL for three years.

When Kahn began practicing, in 1968, specialists in rheumatology were rare. Among his earliest patients were a new generation of "snow birds," including members of New York society, who took up residence in Hollywood and surrounding Broward County during winter months.

As Hollywood grew, so too did Kahn's practice until, a little over a decade after he began, he was joined by Dr. Wayne Riskin, forming a lifelong partnership dedicated to diagnosing and managing a wide range of rheumatic conditions. By the time the partners officially named their practice "South Florida Rheumatology," in 2014, the pair had been treating patients together for 25 years.

Over nearly five decades together, Kahn and Riskin have hired and trained dozens of new doctors. Both have served as President of the Florida Society of Rheumatology, both have had teaching appointments at the University of Miami School of Medicine, and Kahn served as the first Chief of Staff at Memorial Hospital West. Both doctors have contributed extensively to medical research and clinical trials and more than a few other rheumatologists in south Florida began their careers as their students or employees.

Their patients number in the tens of thousands.

In 2020 SFR was acquired by a new management company which, sadly, could not sustain the business. SFR was disolved and the remaining offices in Hollywood and Pembroke Pines were closed in November 2023.

In 2024 Coastal Medical Holdings acquired the leases to South Florida Rheumatology's offices and began to reconstitute the practice. Kahn and Riskin were rehired, along with other longtime employees, and Coastal applied to do business under the old SFR name. Today, South Florida Rheumatology is once again hiring "up-and-coming" new rheumatologists and expanding its practice, and Kahn and Riskin are still doing what they enjoy most: providing the best medical care possible to friends, neighbors, and visitors to south Florida.