A Maryland man has been convicted by a federal jury of fraudulently billing Medicare for expensive respiratory tests for nursing home patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The man found guilty was 42-year-old Patrick Britton-Harr of Annapolis, said a news release issued Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
Britton-Harr provided COVID-19 testing kits to nursing homes across the country during the pandemic, court documents and evidence presented at trial showed, according to the DOJ.
But in addition to the COVID-19 specimens collected and billed to Medicare, Britton-Harr also requested reimbursement “for separate, high-priced respiratory pathogen panel (RPP) tests purportedly conducted in a laboratory he owned in Arizona,” the release said. The RPP tests are designed to screen for over 30 respiratory pathogens.
The defendant falsely claimed to Medicare that physicians…
IT & DATA SECURITY (MITIGATING THE “INSIDER THREAT”)
As seen in the TD Bank case, an employee with too much “access” can sell your customer data to syndicates.
- Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP): Employees should only have access to the specific folders and databases required for their current task.
- Access Revocation: Have a “Termination Checklist” that ensures all digital access (Email, VPN, Banking) is revoked within 60 minutes of an employee resigning or being dismissed.
- System Logs & Audit Trails: Enable “Read/Write Logging” on your server. If a customer’s data is leaked, you need to know exactly which login accessed that record and at what time.
- Encryption at Rest: Ensure that sensitive files (like your customer ID numbers or payroll spreadsheets) are encrypted so that if a staff member copies them to a USB, they cannot be read.