It’s like a scene out of the movie “Catch Me If You Can.” A teenager has been arrested on felony charges of masquerading as a physician’s assistant in the Osceola Regional Medical Center’s emergency room. He performed CPR and Physical Examinations on many patients. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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Matthew Scheidt, 17, was picked up Friday after hospital officials called police earlier this week about suspicions that he was an impostor, police said.
While working in the busy emergency room, Scheidt performed CPR on a patient in cardiac arrest, performed physical examinations and other forms of care to an undisclosed number of unsuspecting patients, an arrest report said.
Officials with Osceola Regional Medical Center could not be reached for comment.
The incident raises questions about the hospital’s ability to properly screen people who work there, according to attorney John Morgan of Morgan & Morgan, a personal injury law firm.
“They’re going to have real problems if somebody got hurt as a result of this kid,” said Morgan. “There’s being duped and there’s being stupid…If this is their level of competence, God help anybody who goes there for other matters.”
The teenager remained in police custody before being transferred to the Orange County Regional Detention Center, a holding facility in Orlando for juvenile offenders. He is being charged with five counts of impersonating a physician’s assistant.
Scheidt obtained hospital credentials by claiming to be a physician’s assistant in a program at Nova Southeastern University, records show.
He apparently knew the hospital from working as a part-time billing clerk for a local group of surgeons. When Scheidt applied for a hospital identification badge on Aug. 24, he told the personnel office he worked as a P.A. for Surgical Management Group and needed a new badge because the surgical practice had changed its name to Osceola Surgical Associates, the arrest report states.
In the days that followed, Scheidt returned at least twice to request a full-access badge that would let him use the doctors’ lounge as well as restricted areas of the hospital, according to the report.
At various times, the teenager bragged that his mother was an executive with the HCA Healthcare System, which owns the hospital, and that he worked in the operating room as an assistant to Dr. Ramirez of Osceola Surgical Associates, the report said.
Dr. Antonio J. Ramirez could not be reached. A staff member who answered the surgical group’s phone said the office declined to comment on Scheidt’s arrest.
When the office manager for the surgical group confronted Scheidt earlier this week, the teenager claimed to be a deputy sheriff working in the emergency room on an undercover investigation so “top secret” the agency would not verify his employment, the report said.
Scheidt once had been an exemplary member of the Osceola County sheriff’s Explorer program for teens interested in law enforcement careers. But he was bounced last year for repeatedly wearing equipment that might mislead the public into believing he was a deputy, records show.
That included displaying a law enforcement badge, carrying a can of chemical spray and wearing a bulletproof vest in public, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Twis Lizasuain.
When police went to Scheidt’s home Wednesday, the teenager said he never posed as a physician’s assistant and accused the hospital of trying to “to cover their butts.” All he did, he claimed, was to job-shadow an emergency room clerk to learn the hospital’s billing system, the report states.
Scheidt showed a detective his hospital ID and a white lab coat with a physician assistant’s reference books, pen lights and note pad in the pockets.
Contrary to the teen’s claim of innocence, hospital staff interviewed by police said that Scheidt told them he was a 23-year-old physician’s assistant student at Nova Southeastern and that he had been sent by Dr. Ramirez to work with one of the ER doctors.
During the week he frequented the emergency room, Scheidt dressed in surgical scrubs and a lab coat identifying him as a physician’s assistant, continued asking for a full-access badge to the rest of the hospital and twice claimed to be a deputy sheriff as well, records state.
As part of his duties, Scheidt interviewed patients, read through confidential medical records, performed physical exams on disrobed male patients, cleaned wounds, restrained a combative patient and performed CPR on a patient in cardiac arrest. Police reports do not indicate if Scheidt received evaluations of his work from the hospital.
The teen’s family owns Canoe Creek Campground, a mobile-home park on about 25 acres of commercial and undeveloped land on Canoe Creek Road in St. Cloud, according to the Property Appraiser’s Office.
