Annapolis lab owner convicted of $18.7 million Medicare fraud tied to nursing home testing

A federal jury in Baltimore convicted Patrick Britton-Harr, 42, of Annapolis, on five counts of health care fraud and one count of money laundering, the Justice Department announced this week. Prosecutors said Britton-Harr used a diagnostic-laboratory company to bill Medicare for respiratory tests that nursing home residents never needed, that physicians never ordered, and that in some cases were never run at all.

The verdict, handed up in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, is Britton-Harr's second federal fraud conviction this year. In June, a separate federal jury in the same courthouse found him guilty on six counts of wire fraud over a private-jet membership scheme run through a company called AeroVanti, a case in which prosecutors said he diverted roughly $15 million in member deposits, according to the Justice Department's announcement of that verdict.

A testing scheme built on top of COVID screening

According to the Justice Department, Britton-Harr began offering COVID-19 testing to nursing homes across the country in 2020. Once outside laboratories had already processed the coronavirus swabs, he billed Medicare separately through his company, Provista Health, for respiratory pathogen panel tests that he claimed had been run at a laboratory he owned in Arizona. Those panels screen for dozens of additional respiratory pathogens and are billed at a far higher rate than a standard COVID test.

Prosecutors said Britton-Harr told Medicare that treating physicians had ordered the panel tests, a requirement for reimbursement. At trial, physicians testified that they had never ordered the tests for their patients, and in some instances had never ordered one in their careers. Trial evidence also showed that Britton-Harr directed inexperienced staff, including a family member and high school and college interns, to bill a respiratory panel test automatically whenever a COVID-19 test was logged, regardless of whether a doctor had requested it.

The Justice Department said the billing continued even after Britton-Harr closed the Arizona lab, barred staff from entering it, and lost access to the equipment needed to run the tests. Some claims were submitted for nursing home residents who had already died.

$18.7 million billed, more than $7.2 million paid

Provista Health billed Medicare $18.7 million for the respiratory panel tests over roughly six months, and Medicare paid out more than $7.2 million of that before the scheme was caught, prosecutors said. The Justice Department said the proceeds helped fund a lavish lifestyle, including a $112,500 Porsche 911 and $25,000-a-month mortgage payments on Britton-Harr's waterfront home in Annapolis.

Britton-Harr was convicted of five counts of health care fraud and one count of transactional money laundering. Each count carries a maximum sentence of ten years in federal prison. No sentencing date has been set; a judge will determine any sentence under the advisory U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors, the department said.

The case was investigated by the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General and the FBI's Baltimore field office, and prosecuted by a trial attorney from the Justice Department's Health Care Fraud Unit together with an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland.

Who was affected

The direct victim of the billing scheme was Medicare, the federal health insurance program that covers more than 65 million older and disabled Americans, run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. But the Justice Department said nursing home residents were also effectively used as a vehicle for the fraud, since tests were billed in their names without a doctor's order and, in some cases, after they had died. The college and high school interns and the family member who prosecutors said were directed to submit the billing were not charged in the case, according to the department's account of the trial evidence.

Nursing homes and the laboratories that serviced them became frequent targets of COVID-era billing schemes nationwide, as federal relief programs loosened some reimbursement rules to speed up pandemic testing. The Justice Department's health care fraud enforcement effort has grown out of exactly that period: the department's Health Care Fraud Strike Force Program, which now runs nine regional strike forces, has charged more than 6,200 defendants who collectively billed federal health programs and private insurers more than $45 billion since the program's launch in 2007.

Reaction and what comes next

U.S. Attorney Kelly O. Hayes for the District of Maryland framed the conviction as a warning to others.

"There is nowhere to hide for those who commit fraud," Hayes said in the Justice Department's statement announcing the verdict.

Hayes separately told CBS News Baltimore that her office would continue pursuing similar cases, saying prosecutors "will find you and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law." FBI Baltimore Special Agent in Charge Jimmy Paul said the bureau would keep pursuing people who steal from taxpayers, pointing to Britton-Harr's earlier conviction in the AeroVanti investment case as evidence of a pattern.

No sentencing date has been scheduled for the Medicare case. Britton-Harr also has not yet been sentenced in the AeroVanti wire fraud case, where he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison on each of six counts; his attorneys sought a new trial in that case over the summer, citing alleged contact between a deputy courtroom clerk and jurors. It is not yet clear from court filings how that request was resolved. Between the two federal cases, Britton-Harr now faces a combined statutory maximum well beyond any sentence he is likely to actually receive, though federal judges typically impose far less than the maximum under sentencing guidelines that weigh the amount of loss, the defendant's criminal history and other factors.