Louisiana Voice

Floyd Hamilton III has been waging a lonely battle with the Veterans Administration for 14 years and today, May 20, is the 11th anniversary of  his father’s death in the Alexandria Veterans Hospital on May 20, 2009. It was the day after his 84^th birthday.

His battle is with the doctor who was supposed to be caring for Floyd Hamilton, Jr. but who failed to do her job, according to Hamilton III.

And with the bureaucracy.

The most frustrating part is the three-page LETTER from Assistant District Attorney Hugo Holland back in October 2016 in which Holland declined to pursue the matter because, according to his investigation, Dr. Shivani Negi committed no wrongdoing in her care for Hamilton’s father.

Curiously, while the VA Hospital is in Rapides Parish, Holland’s letter was on Calcasieu Parish District Attorney John DeRosier’s letterhead. Holland is employed as an assistant DA by a number of district attorneys, including, apparently, Rapides Parish. Still, it raises questions about who paid Holland to conduct his investigation—Rapides or Calcasieu.

Regardless, Holland said here was “no information that any document was filed in Louisiana which contained any false statements” and that “no false documents were presented to the State of Virginia’s Board of Medicine,” where Negi’s license was issued.

Former Louisiana congressman Charles Boustany, himself a physician, had filed a complaint about “unethical conduct” by several individuals, including Dr. Negi, who he said misrepresented herself when applying for her license in Virginia when she checked the box “NO” to the question if she had ever been denied a license.

In a well-rehearsed shuffle that only a trained bureaucrat can pull off, the Virginia licensing board said that yes, Negi was denied a license by the State of Florida but that she had been given 14 days in which to withdraw her application—which she subsequently did.

Ergo, the lie never occurred, according to the State of Virginia.

LouisianaVoice, way back in July 2016, ran the STORY of Negi’s falsifying her Virginia application as well as records of complaints from her work in the state of Maryland.

But why did the State of Florida deny her application? Well, it seems that when she applied for her license in that state, she failed to disclose an incident in which she altered an admission order sheet after the fact. The Maryland investigation had concluded that Dr. Negi “inappropriately altered the medical records after the fact by adding her order for blood sutures to the chart order shed sometime after December 6, 2000, 2:30 a.m., and by trying to make it appear as though it was written by December 5, 2000, 10:00 p.m.

“Furthermore, the committee is dismayed by Dr. Negi’s inability or unwillingness to admit to this inappropriate alteration of the medical records. The committee unanimously agreed that this inappropriate alteration of the medical records and the physician’s implausible response to our questioning, reflect not only bad judgment but also unethical behavior,” the report said.

So now, we have two occasions in which Dr. Negi lied on official forms and yet she continues to treat patients at the VA Hospital in Alexandria.

Hamilton said he believes Dr. Negi withholds critical medical care from patients she believes are ready to die. He said, “She told me he was 84 years old and had a good life, and why do I want him coded. Dr. Negi not only put in orders to take him off of the breathing machine she also took him off of antibiotics and had him taken off of ICU.”

Hamilton says Dr. Negi took those actions against the wishes of the family.

LouisianaVoice also published a story in June 2016 which detailed complaints about Dr. Negi from family members of patients as well as from medical staff who provided written statements or testified in depositions as to Negi’s inappropriate remarks in the presence of family members and patients. [To see that story, click HERE.]

One cannot assign a specific case such as that of Floyd Hamilton’s to the Trump administration, especially since the problems began long before Trump took office.

On the other hand, Trump promised to fix veterans’ problems when he got elected, he vowed that he would instruct his staff “that if a valid complaint is not addressed, that the issue be brought directly to me. I will pick up the phone and fix it myself if I have to.”

Trump loves to fire people, and if Dr. Negi presents a problem for veterans and their families, we have a situation made to order for him.

Instead, he has broken his promise by PURGING 200,000 VA healthcare applications.

And Floyd Hamilton, III continues his lonely battle with the bureaucracy.