Stand on Hospital Merger Softened : Camarillo: A health care district drops its threat to take over the institution, but demands that it remain a full-service facility.

As if he were diagnosing a patient, Dr. Richard Loft stood in front of a room packed with Camarillo residents and summed up why so many of them are experiencing “discomfort” about the fate of the city’s only hospital.

The problem, he said, comes down to fear of the unknown.

Too much mystery has surrounded Pleasant Valley Hospital’s possible merger with St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, Loft said at a Camarillo Health Care District meeting Wednesday night.

The fears of residents range from losing emergency care services to the possibility that St. John’s might close the hospital one day, he said.

“We only learn information half the time by accident,” said the physician who works at the Camarillo hospital. “We don’t know what the future holds.”

Loft’s comments came as the health care district, struggling to preserve a role for itself in the hospital’s destiny, retreated from an earlier threat to try to take total control of Pleasant Valley if necessary to guarantee full services.

Despite a series of emotional speeches from Camarillo residents asking that the board “save the hospital,” the board decided not to try to legally take back the facility that it gave up in 1983.

Instead, the board moved to give the hospital its second threat in two weeks: either agree to its demands about keeping a full-service facility or deal with a request for the state’s attorney general to investigate the merger.

The board’s demands stem from concerns of Camarillo residents that once the merger occurs, they will be unable to stop services from being cut or prevent the hospital from being closed.

In the letter sent to the hospital Thursday, the health care district board demanded that it be made a third party in a merger to enforce any services agreement. The board said that any change in services should occur only if the hospital is losing money and that the institution should firm up its commitment to keep basic emergency services at Pleasant Valley Hospital.

The language was weaker than last week’s ultimatum, when the board told the hospital to either rejoin the district or face legal action.

That threat provoked an angry response from Pleasant Valley Hospital’s board chairman, Thomas Dodds. In a letter to an earlier meeting Tuesday, Dodds wrote that the hospital “will not be intimidated by threats of litigation or coercion” and that it would not accept district jurisdiction.

That left the board to decide whether to carry out its threat of legal action. On Wednesday night, the board’s lawyer spelled out how arduous and expensive taking back the hospital really would be.

The district would have to put up the money for operating costs of the hospital if it really planned to take it over, said attorney Bob Lundy. And that was sufficient to soften the board’s position.

The final outcome Wednesday left at least some of the 50 Camarillo residents who attended the meeting disappointed.

Part of their fight to keep control of the hospital has stemmed from its history as a symbol of Camarillo’s growth.

With land donated by a local farmer, the health care district built the hospital in 1974 for $4.9 million raised with tax-exempt revenue bonds. The district ran the hospital until 1983, when officials felt that a private nonprofit corporation could do a better job of managing the facility and raising money.

Since the hospital announced in February that it was considering a merger with St. John’s, health care district meetings, sparsely attended in the past, have become crowded events.

Earlier this week, the hospital gave the district board something it wanted: a service agreement between Pleasant Valley and St. Johns to keep Pleasant Valley open for five years as an acute care facility.

But James Jeffers, a Camarillo attorney and a board candidate, said Wednesday’s outcome was a disappointing follow-up.

“They took a firm position last week and then they backed down,” said Jeffers, who helped form the group Save Our Hospital to try to block the merger. “There is an election coming up. Maybe people will see fit to elect new directors.”

Loft said the board’s action did little for his own feelings of discomfort.

“Had they been willing to take a much stronger stand, we could have better influenced the outcome,” Loft said. “I lived here and practiced here when we didn’t have a hospital and I have seen what having one can do for a community.”