A Columbia physician and urgent care clinic owner was arrested Wednesday following a federal indictment alleging health care fraud and illegal drug prescriptions, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Missouri.
The indictment alleges that Jonathan Morris, 46, defrauded Medicare and Medicaid and provided prescription drugs to friends, people suffering from substance use disorders and those with whom he had sexual relationships, according to the news release.
He was indicted on April 8 in St. Louis with 15 counts of illegal prescribing of controlled substances and 23 counts of health care fraud, according to the news release.
Morris has been the owner of Columbia Urgent Care from, at least, May 2019 through April 8, 2025. Allegedly, Morris made it so that Medicare and Medicaid were billed for service as if it were provided by him instead of the assistant physicians he employed, according to the indictment.
Assistant physicians are medical school graduates who have not entered a residency program and require training and supervision by a fully licensed physician. Morris allegedly allowed assistant physicians to train each other, as well as left them unsupervised when he left the clinic for domestic and international travel, and to work at a different clinic in St. Louis, according to the news release.
Additionally, the indictment accuses Morris of providing controlled substance prescriptions outside of the usual course of professional practice and for no legitimate medical purpose to friends, associates, those with substance use disorders and those with whom he had sexual relationships.
A motion aims to have Morris held in jail until his trial, as it says investigators know of around 20 people who received prescriptions for a total of over 15,000 individual dosage units of controlled substances from Morris despite existence of substance use issues, sexual relations with Morris, or both, according to the news release.
The motion also says that Morris’ clinic was a “free-for-all when it comes to issuing prescriptions for controlled substances,” and that “evidence supports that Morris, who still has an active DEA registration, is continuing to operate his clinic in this manner,” according to the news release.