A young woman working at a hospital in Florida drew blood, administered medications and started IV lines, treating about 4,500 individuals over seven months. She did her job so well that she was offered a promotion at the start of this year.
But when the hospital, AdventHealth Palm Coast Parkway in Palm Coast, Fla., checked the status of the woman’s nursing license, they discovered that she had an expired certified nursing assistant license, that she had never passed a licensing exam and that she had been using the license number of another nurse with the same first name.
Instead of a promotion, she was fired.
The woman, Autumn Bardisa, 29, was arrested on Tuesday at her Palm Coast home on seven counts of practicing a health care profession without a license and seven counts of fraudulent use of personal identification information, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office said on Wednesday. She was wearing her blue medical scrubs.
She was charged with one count for each month in which she fraudulently practiced as a registered nurse, the sheriff’s office said.
Ms. Bardisa is being held in the county jail on a $70,000 bond. It was not clear whether she had a lawyer.
“This is one of the most disturbing cases of medical fraud we’ve ever investigated,” Sheriff Rick Staly said in a statement. “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.”
Sheriff Staly said that his office, which conducted an investigation in coordination with AdventHealth and state and federal agencies, had not learned of anyone who was seriously hurt or injured by Ms. Bardisa’s actions.
She was hired in July 2023, the hospital said. In her application, Ms. Bardisa said that she had completed all the educational requirements to become a registered nurse, hospital officials found. She also said that she had not yet passed the national exam to obtain her license, they said.
During the hiring process, Ms. Bardisa told the hospital that she had passed the exam. She gave a license number matching another person with the same first name, Autumn.
But the license had a different last name, officials said. Ms. Bardisa told the hospital that she had recently been married, and that she had a new last name. Ms. Bardisa was then asked to submit her marriage license to AdventHealth, they said. Ms. Bardisa, though, never did.
She began working that July as an advanced nurse technician, working under the direct supervision of a registered nurse or a licensed practical nurse, officials said. Becoming a licensed registered nurse was an expectation upon accepting her job at AdventHealth, officials said.
Ms. Bardisa then went through a residency program that she completed in June 2024, and accepted a position as a registered nurse at AdventHealth.
She worked in the job from June 2024 until January, though she had not passed the exam and therefore should not have been in the residency program.
She was offered a promotion to charge nurse, a registered nurse who assumes leadership responsibilities over a specific unit or shift, the hospital said.
After the promotion offer, AdventHealth employees discovered that Ms. Bardisa had never provided her marriage license as originally requested. She was fired after she, again, failed to confirm her identity.
Hospital officials reached out to the sheriff’s office, which worked with the Florida Department of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to review her documents and conduct interviews with AdventHealth employees and the nurse whose identity Ms. Bardisa was accused of stealing.
The investigation found that Ms. Bardisa had attended nursing school with the other nurse, who was also employed by AdventHealth, but at a different hospital. The two did not personally know each other, detectives said.
They determined that Ms. Bardisa had participated in giving medical services to 4,486 individuals from June 2024 through January 2025.
Adeel Hassan, a New York-based reporter for The Times, covers breaking news and other topics.
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