A physician assistant was sentenced to prison for his role in a $10 million Medicare fraud scheme involving genetic testing. Colby Edward Joyner, 37, of Monroe, NC, was sentenced to 72 months in prison and ordered to pay over $3.6 million in restitution. According to the sentencing hearing and evidence presented at Joyner’s trial, in 2018 and 2019, Joyner was a physician assistant in the Charlotte area who worked as an independent contractor for a physician staffing and telemedicine company. During the relevant time frame, Joyner signed fraudulent prescriptions for medically unnecessary genetic testing, specifically cancer genomic and pharmacogenetic testing, for over 600 Medicare beneficiaries residing in North Carolina. Joyner had never met, seen, or treated the beneficiaries, and only had brief telephone conversations with them or no interactions at all.
According to court records, Joyner received from the telemedicine company and its clients pre-populated prescription forms and related records for patients who were pre-selected for genetic testing, which he then electronically signed and returned, in exchange for $12—and later $15—for each purported consultation that he performed. As trial evidence showed, to conceal that Joyner was not the beneficiaries’ treating physician and that he did not conduct medical evaluations or examinations of the beneficiaries, Joyner falsified medical records in connection with the unnecessary prescriptions and falsely certified that the genetic tests were medically necessary. Joyner’s scheme resulted in the submission of more than $10 million in fraudulent reimbursement claims to Medicare, and more than $3.6 million in payments.
