Former doctor with practice at Roxborough Hospital charged in drug scheme

Jeffrey Bado, 59, has been charged with two counts of maintaining a drug-involved premises, 200 counts of distribution of controlled substances, 33 counts of health care fraud, four counts of false statements, as well as aiding and abetting.

The charges stem from two medical practices, one maintained by Bado at Roxborough Memorial Hospital between 2009 and 2011, and the other a private office known as Comprehensive Pain Consultants, located at 574B West Lancaster Avenue, Bryn Mawr, from 2011 to 2013.

Bado faces a sentence of at least 24 years in prison if convicted of all charges according to a statement from the U.S. District Attorney’s office. 

Controlled substances 

The indictment alleges that Bado “prescribed narcotics outside the usual course of professional practice and without there being a legitimate medical purpose for these controlled substances to be prescribed to the customers.”

The document argues that not only did Bado dispense prescriptions for drugs containing narcotics to patients without seeing these patients for a regular visit, but that Bado, or members of his staff, distributed multiple prescriptions to patients within the course of a single visit to his office.

A patient seen by Bado may have “provided little or no recent medical records on their first visit to verify their claim of pain or prior history of prescribed opioid medications, or provided medical records that were not consistent with their claims of pain.”

The indictment further alleges that Bado’s “prescribing habits mirrored the needs of drug addicts and drug traffickers,” and that despite having knowledge “of illegal drug use, addiction, and failure to use the oxycodone as prescribed,” Bado “still continued to issue prescriptions for large amounts of oxycodone to customers.”

Health fraud

Over the course of several months in 2010, Bado “knowingly and willfully executed, and attempted to execute, a scheme or artifice to defraud health care benefit programs…and to obtain, by means of false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises, money and property owned by, or under the custody or control of each of those health care benefit programs by submitting false and fraudulent claims for reimbursement,” according to the indictment.

At the time in question Bado made a trip to Haiti. According to the indictment Bado, in advance of this trip, directed his employees at Roxborough Memorial Hospital to bring to his office the charts for all of the patients scheduled for office visits during the time he was to be in Haiti. Bado then allegedly “made notations in the charts falsely indicating that he had personally seen and evaluated the patient-customers and directing what prescriptions were to be provided to the customers who would be seen at his office during that upcoming week,” and further, “signed the patient charts and signed the prescriptions for the patients he had not seen and who were scheduled for the upcoming week.”

The indictment argues that Bado did not attempt to reschedule the patient visits slated for the time of his visit to Haiti, and furthermore led his employees and hospital staff to believe that appropriate arrangements had been made with other physicians to cover his absence, when in point of fact he “instructed residents, nurses, and other staff to see the patients for the week and to give them the pre-written and pre-signed prescriptions.”

In this regard, Bado “caused to be submitted 25 claims for payment to Medicare, private insurance companies and health care benefit plans and contracts” for patient visits overseen “by residents and other non-physicians who were neither supervised by defendant Bado nor supervised by any other fully licensed physician.”

According to the statement issued by the US District Attorney’s Office, it is further alleged that “Bado subsequently made several materially false statements to federal agents regarding the arrangements he made before leaving for Haiti, including falsely claiming that he had not filled out in advance out any medical records for the patient appointments that occurred while he was in Haiti.”