MIAMI — A Florida woman was arrested and accused of posing as a nurse and treating thousands of patients with another nurse’s license, authorities said.
Autumn Bardisa, 29, of Palm Coast, faces seven counts of practicing as a health care professional without a license and seven counts of fraudulent use of personal identification information, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.
The sheriff’s office said that after Bardisa worked at AdventHealth Palm Coast Parkway Hospital for nearly two years, a colleague discovered that she was not licensed to work as a nurse after she got a promotion this year.
In her time at the hospital, Bardisa “participated in medical services” for 4,486 patients from June 2024 to this January despite “never holding a valid nursing license,” the sheriff’s office said.
AdventHealth hired Bardisa on July 3, 2023, as an advanced nurse tech, who works under the direct supervision of a registered nurse.
When she applied, she claimed she was an “education first” registered nurse, which meant she had passed the required schooling to become a registered nurse but had not yet passed the national exam for her license, authorities said.
During the hiring process, Bardisa told the hospital she had passed the exam and provided a license number that matched her first name, Autumn, but with a different last name, the sheriff’s office said.
Bardisa tried to explain the discrepancy by claiming she had recently got married and had a new last name, the sheriff’s office said. The hospital asked her to provide her marriage license as proof but she never did, it said.
The name and license number she provided, however, belonged to another nurse, also with the first name Autumn, who AdventHealth employed at a different hospital, the sheriff’s office said.
Bardisa then went on to work at the hospital without scrutiny. In January, she was offered a promotion.
The promotion “sparked interest” among her colleagues, the sheriff’s office said. A fellow employee checked the status of her license at that time and found “she had an expired certified nursing assistant license, which the employee reported to administrators,” the sheriff’s office said.
AdventHealth then opened an investigation into the claim and found Bardisa never provided her marriage license to confirm her identity, the sheriff’s office said.
Bardisa was terminated Jan. 22 “after she failed to confirm her identity,” the sheriff’s office said. AdventHealth then contacted the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a criminal investigation.
The probe took seven months, in conjunction with the Florida Health Department and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and included interviews with the nurse whose identity Bardisa is alleged to have stolen.
The two had attended the same college, but the Autumn whose identity was stolen said they did not personally know each other, the sheriff’s office said. That Autumn said AdventHealth told her about the alleged fraud in January.
An arrest warrant for Bardisa was issued Aug. 5 and she was arrested at her home. Video of her arrest showed officers confronting her as she was in her car, wearing blue scrubs, the sheriff’s office said.
Sheriff Rick Staly called the arrest “one of the most disturbing cases of medical fraud we’ve ever investigated.”
“This woman potentially put thousands of lives at risk by pretending to be someone she was not and violating the trust of patients, their families, AdventHealth and an entire medical community,” Staly continued.
The charging affidavit said AdventHealth “failed to immediately identify that Autumn had never uploaded the marriage license” and of “oversight on the discrepancies” in Bardisa’s employee information.
AdventHealth said it does not comment on pending legal matters or personnel matters.
Bardisa remained in custody Thursday morning on $70,00 bond. It was not immediately clear whether she had an attorney, and her arraignment was set for September 2.
By MARIENE LENTHANG/NBC News
Marlene Lenthang is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.
