Louisiana Voice

The investigation into the practices of a physician at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center VAMC) in Pineville appears to have ended with findings of no criminal wrongdoing on the part of Dr. Shivani Negi.

That’s not to say that Dr. Negi escaped unscathed with then-5^th District U.S. Rep. Dr. Ralph Abraham declaring, “The VA system is broken.” Abraham also wrote that the Alexandria facility hired her “knowing that she had inadequate credentials for practicing medicine.”

A former investigator for the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office even said, “We were headed toward an indictment” (of Negi) until Jeff Landry defeated his boss, incumbent Buddy Caldwell, in the 2015 election and closed the investigation. Investigator Arthur Orga left the AG’s office shortly after Landry took over.

Complaints against Negi included allegations that she withheld treatment for patients, administered steroids to a diabetic patient even though he informed her he could not take steroids, that she altered medical records in another state to cover her failure to order a blood culture on a patient, that she screamed at staff, threw charts at fellow workers and was often referred to anger management classes. The most damning, however, was the question raided over her qualifications in light of her failure to reveal to the State of Virginia the fact that her application for a license to practice had been rejected by the State of Florida.

In her application to the Virginia Board of Medicine, there was a section in which she was required to provide details about any prior denial of a medical license. She left that section on her application blank even though Florida had rejected her application on the grounds that she had concealed the fact that she had altered an admission order sheet after the fact to hide the fact that she had neglected to order a blood culture on a patient while employed at Maryland General Hospital.

A committee that investigated the incident reported that her actions and her subsequent “implausible response” reflected “not only bad judgment but also unethical behavior.”

She was never licensed in Louisiana, but her Virginia license was considered adequate for her employment in the VA system

Dr. John Sam, who worked with Dr. Negi for more than a decade at the VA facility in Pineville said that every year he worked with her, someone would report her behavior to the VA Office of Inspector General and she would end up in anger management. “Dr. Negi was rude and spoke in a harsh tone of voice to almost all the staff while I was a patient there,” wrote one former patient in a sworn affidavit.

Another former patient, Dennis Egelston said, “The first time I saw Dr. Negi, she took me off the antibiotics and started me on steroids. I told her I was diabetic and couldn’t be put on steroids. This did not stop her even though I pleaded with her not to. She told me, ‘I am the doctor and you are the patient, and I will do what I want to.’ My blood sugar shot up from 180 to almost 500. This woman has no regard for human life.”

Floyd Hamilton has been a particular thorn in Negi’s side after she put in orders to remove his 84-year-old father from a breathing machine and took him off antibiotics against the wishes of the family.

Floyd Hamilton has been fighting a lonely battle against Negi and the VA 13 years, taking his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which refused to hear his case.

He then went to law enforcement but with similar results.

While it appeared briefly that there might be a criminal indictment, those hopes were dashed with the election of Jeff Landry in 2015.

He fared no better with the office of 14^th JDC District Attorney John DeRosier and his special investigator Hugo Holland.

Holland, in a three-page letter to the junior Hamilton, noted that the doctor’s actions did not rise to the level of homicide or, for that matter, even medical malpractice.

Holland, who hires himself out to a dozen or more district attorneys across the state, specializes in more high-profile, primarily capital, cases involving defendants with few financial resources to mount a formidable defense and showed little interest in pursuing a case against a doctor and a federal agency with the resources to fight back.