(Tribune News Service) — A federal judge ordered an Annapolis man and his medical lab companies to pay $26.3 million for billing Medicare for unnecessary respiratory tests during the coronavirus pandemic.

Prosecutors wrote in a complaint last year that Patrick Britton-Harr of Annapolis owned and operated multiple companies, including Annapolis-based Provista Health LLC, that billed Medicare for the medically unnecessary tests, some of which were never performed.

During the pandemic, Provista began offering COVID-19 tests to nursing homes in order to bill Medicare for “a wide array of medically unnecessary respiratory pathogen panel tests,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote in a news release.

Britton-Harr did not respond to a phone call and voicemail seeking comment Friday.

Federal prosecutors claimed he set out to profit from the pandemic by taking advantage of nursing homes that were desperate for COVID-19 tests by billing them for respiratory pathogen panel tests. They wrote that Britton-Harr and his companies projected that they could make $120 million in revenue in 2020, $300 million in 2021 and $500 million in 2022 by testing a high volume of patients.

The complaint said Britton-Harr and his companies billed and received more than $7 million in Medicare reimbursements “before the fraudulent scheme fell apart.”

“The exploitation of federal health care programs designed to help the elderly and disabled during a national crisis is absolutely inexcusable,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Erek L. Barron said in the release. “Regardless of their methods, we will hold accountable those who defraud such programs for personal gain.”

The companies submitted claims for tests that didn’t happen, tests that physicians never ordered and tests for patients who showed no symptoms of respiratory illnesses. In the case of 348 tests, the date listed for the collection of a nasal swab sample was after the patient had died. According to the complaint, some of the panel tests looked for rare pathogens like bordetella bronchiseptica, which causes “kennel cough” in dogs but is rare in humans, as well as the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease.

Although the companies advertised COVID-19 tests, they sent samples for the tests to outside labs without disclosing that to Medicare. The results of those tests were often long-delayed.

According to the complaint, one nursing home executive wrote of Britton-Harr’s company AMS Onsite: “They have delayed results and are piss poor at best. I certainly wish they worried as much about service as they do about payment.”

Doctors and nursing home staff warned Britton-Harr’s companies that tests were being conducted that hadn’t been ordered or that aspects of the scheme might be illegal, the complaint said.

U.S. District Judge Ellen L. Hollander approved prosecutors’ motion for default judgments last week after Britton-Harr and six of his companies failed to defend against the allegations. Under the law Britton-Harr and his companies were charged under, the False Claims Act, the government is entitled to triple damages.

Prosecutors said in the complaint that Britton-Harr used proceeds from “this fraudulent scheme” to buy or rent aircraft, then founded a private charter airplane service called Aerovanti.

Britton-Harr sold his Annapolis home without court approval, in violation of a court order, in September 2023 for $575,000, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. In March, Hollander held Britton-Harr in civil contempt and ordered him to hand over the sale’s proceeds to the court. The attorney who represented him in the March contempt hearing did not immediately return a phone call Friday.

Britton-Harr is due back in court on July 31 for a second hearing related to a failure to turn over evidence, according to Hollander’s July 17 order.

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