Officials Deny Merger Threatens Health Services : Health care: Critics remain skeptical about the effects of joining hospitals in Camarillo and Oxnard.

Responding to the concerns of Camarillo doctors and senior citizens, Pleasant Valley Hospital and St. John’s Regional Medical Center officials denied Monday that a proposed merger would eliminate essential health services at Pleasant Valley.

In fact, officials said, they plan to add a $4-million rehabilitation unit to Pleasant Valley if the merger goes through.

The merger will not do away with Pleasant Valley’s emergency room, as doctors and Leisure Village residents fear, they said. Instead, the administrators said, the merger with St. John’s in Oxnard would help the Camarillo hospital stay open and viable.

“The emergency room was never an issue,” Pleasant Valley President Norman Gruber said.

A news conference Monday was the first time that hospital officials gave a definitive answer about the future of Pleasant Valley, after a month of saying they did not know how or if services would be changed.

Despite hospital administrators’ reassurances, some doctors and Leisure Village residents who use the independent community hospital said they remain skeptical.

Dr. Richard Loft, chairman of Pleasant Valley’s department of family practice, said concerns about reduced services had been dismissed by administrators as false rumors. But he said he had received that information directly from those same officials.

He said Gruber and St. John’s President Dan Herlinger had told some of the doctors that services would be curtailed.

But Herlinger said at the news conference that no definite plans have ever been stated. He said Monday’s announcements were based on decisions made by the two boards of directors, which met last Friday.

Loft said hospital administrators changed their response because they had not anticipated the community’s reaction.

“The community just went bonkers about losing their community hospital,” he said.

Loft said he and other doctors are still concerned that Pleasant Valley eventually will be closed. Hospital officials, however, said that closure is more likely to happen if there is no merger.

Gruber said that if Pleasant Valley remains independent, projections show that it would face a deficit in the millions of dollars in the next three to five years. Loft countered after the news conference that none of the research shows that it would be financially advantageous to leave services as they are at Pleasant Valley.

While maintaining that neither hospital would run any differently, the administrators emphasized the need to streamline operations and eliminate duplication of services.

Gruber acknowledged the possibility of layoffs. Pleasant Valley has 200 doctors and 600 employees. St. John’s has 300 doctors and 1,200 employees. St. John’s is scheduled to move into a new facility in September.

“Layoffs are something you have to deal with in the course of business,” Gruber said.

Leisure Village resident Sandy Okum said he was unsure whether Monday’s announcement has allayed his concerns.

“You don’t know whether to believe them or not,” he said. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Up until now, we thought there were going to be some very radical changes at Pleasant Valley Hospital,” Okum said.

Dr. Gary Alpern, who practices at Pleasant Valley, said he thinks that administrators are still not being truthful in the statements being made to the community. “Well, my personal opinion is that they’re lies,” he said.

Alluding to mergers between airlines, Alpern said: “Where is PSA? Where is Western Airlines? Gone. Where will Pleasant Hospital be? Gone.”

Alpern and other doctors have criticized the merger because, they said, there was too little study and the merger was announced to staff after it was a done deal. Like the residents, they said they fear that the merger will cause Camarillo residents’ care to suffer.

“I’m not certain that all the avenues have been explored,” Alpern said. “The merger may have some adverse effect on the people in the community.”

But administrators from both hospitals said that will not be the case. They said the merger, which must be approved by the Federal Trade Commission before becoming final, would ensure Pleasant Valley’s long-term viability.

Small hospitals across the nation are in trouble, Gruber said, adding: “That’s a fact of life.”

Pleasant Valley has had a 50% bed occupancy rate. Gruber said that is projected to rise to 80% once the rehabilitation center, where stroke and car accident victims would receive therapy, moves to Pleasant Valley. He said it would cost an estimated $4 million to accommodate the new center.

The merger would make it easier for Pleasant Valley to borrow money, he said. As it stands now, the hospital is too small to warrant a bond rating by agencies such as Standard & Poor’s.

Like St. John’s, Pleasant Valley would be placed under the corporate umbrella of Catholic Healthcare West. The hospital’s $20-million debt would be absorbed into Catholic Healthcare’s $618-million debt.

The proposed merger would fall in line with a trend over the past two years in Southern California, according to David Langness, vice president of communications for the Los Angeles-based Hospital Council of Southern California.

“There has been a spate of mergers recently in the hospital world,” Langness said.

The primary motivator is the ability of larger institutions to operate more efficiently. Merging hospitals also allows streamlining of internal operations such as billing and purchasing.

Pleasant Valley, a 17-year-old nonprofit hospital, is run by a board of directors representing the community. St. John’s is also a nonprofit facility, founded by the Sisters of Mercy 80 years ago. It is also run by a board of directors.

Pleasant Valley is now licensed for 180 beds and St. John’s for 263. Once St. John’s moves to its new facility, it will be licensed for 237 beds. If the merger does not go through, the rehabilitation center will be housed in the old St. John’s facility at F Street and Doris Avenue. That facility is now slated to be razed to make room for 275 to 300 units of senior citizen housing.