Last Updated on June 17, 2024
Nursing homes for aging veterans owned by William “Bill” Biggs, the husband of South Carolina GOP congressional candidate Sheri Biggs, have been plagued by scandals and have failed to properly investigate injuries that aging veterans received while living in facilities operated by Biggs’ company, HMR Veterans Services Inc. The issues have led to interventions by state and federal authorities and even the closure of HMR facilities.
Under taxpayer-funded contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, HMR Veterans Services Inc. currently manages 12 veterans homes across the states of Texas, Alabama, and South Carolina, having been kicked out of Maryland in 2023 after complaints of abuse, neglect, and even physical altercations with patients surfaced at the Charlotte Hall Veterans Home in St. Mary’s County.
The situation at Charlotte Hall was so bad, that it arrived on Maryland Governor Wes Moore’s desk “within hours” of him taking office.
“Within hours and I mean within hours of our administration taking office, we learned that things were not going well at Charlotte Hall,” Moore said at the time. “In fact, the situation happening at Charlotte Hall is a moral failure of government,” he added, canceling HMR’s $341.7 million contract with the State of Maryland as one of his first orders of gubernatorial business.
“[Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] in their five-star rating services relegated Charlotte Hall to one-star status with an abuse warning,” said Moore. “A nursing home cannot earn a lower score in the system. That means Charlotte Hall is among the nation’s worst performing nursing home facilities.”
While the situation in Maryland is disturbing enough, it’s far from the only instance of HMR Veterans Services Inc. failing to properly serve the aging veterans living under their care.
As mentioned, in addition to Charlotte Hall, the South Carolina-based company operates 12 other veterans nursing homes in Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas. At those locations, the company has also been the subject of several investigations and news reports documenting the abuse and neglect of residents.
At an HMR-run facility in Walterboro, South Carolina known as the Veterans Victory House, local media reported in 2019 that “86-year-old Anne Harrell, went as far as calling the White House to seek a federal investigation into the care of her husband, James, an Air Force veteran who has Alzheimer’s disease.”
“Anne Harrell said her husband has had repeated infections, several hospitalizations, and unexplained bumps and bruises since he arrived at the home in September 2015,” the report, which was published in 2019, explained.
When state investigators finally descended on the facility, in December of 2018, local media reported that “things were so bad at the home in Walterboro that inspectors found the existence of ‘immediate jeopardy,’ a rare designation of danger that can result in residents being moved into another facility right away.”
Despite investigators’ findings and the disturbing stories of aging veterans and their family members that came out of the facility, HMR still runs the Veterans Victory House to this day.
Severe circumstances at HMR facilities have also arisen in Alabama and Texas.
In Alabama, former HMR employees complained of gross mistreatment of veterans at the HMR-run Floyd E. “Tut” Fann State Veterans Home in Huntsville, where they reported that patients suffered from severe bed sores and scabies, and were even being exposed to bed bugs.
According to a local media outlet that investigated the complaints, “years of state records” supported the ex-employees complaints, which had been ignored and not properly investigated by HMR management.
In Texas, state regulators called for a change in management (which was never made) at an HMR facility in El Paso, after a 96-year-old WW2 veteran died of Covid in the facility in 2020.
The veteran, Eugene Forti, was reportedly winning his battle against the virus, and after 10 days in a hospital, he was returned to the HMR-run Texas State Veterans Home; and that’s where his demise began. After arriving back at the facility, Forti’s family say that he rapidly deteriorated, and ultimately passed away.
Remarkably, despite HMR’s long history of alleged mistreatment and abuse of veterans, Sheri Biggs, the wife of HMR head William Biggs, is running for Congress on a platform calling on America to “keep the promises to our veterans,” and has made her service in the Air National Guard a centerpiece of her campaign.
She faces Pastor Mark Burns in a June 25th GOP run-off vote in South Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District.