Major Hospital Operation : Oxnard: Staff and 80 patients are transferred from the old St. John’s Regional Medical Center to a larger more comfortable facility.

After Bill Dager’s intravenous tube was unhooked and his oxygen container tucked next to him on his bed, he etched a parting message on the walls of the 80-year-old hospital:

“Bill Dager was here. The last but not the least,” the 77-year-old Santa Paula man wrote with a pen.

In the hospital for heart trouble, Dager was one of the 80 patients moved Saturday from the old St. John’s Regional Medical Center on F Street in Oxnard to the new facility on Rose Avenue. With 289 hospital employees on hand to help with the move, patients were escorted and briefed about what they could expect from the day’s chaotic move.

“They tell me it’s like the Waldorf,” Dager said. “They say you can’t believe it. A single room in a hospital? They’re going to throw me off of Medicare.”

Contrasted with the old hospital, a four-story, 282-bed facility with an institutional feel on 15 acres, the new hospital resembles a resort, with its pastel decor and piped-in classical music. Owned and operated by the San Francisco-based Catholic Healthcare West, the new St. John’s cost $110 million and occupies 45 acres at Gonzales Street and Rose Avenue. Each of the 230 rooms is private with wide windows and a full bathroom.

Sister Corita Burnham, the hospital’s director of mission services, said, “Today is the beginning of a new era of health care. It’s a dream come true.”

Mixed with the staff’s excitement was some sadness as nurses hugged and packed up supplies.

Hospital workers joined patients in jotting their opinions, feelings and observations onto the old building’s walls. “We’re the greatest. We’re right on. We’re the nurses of the ‘John.’ ”

Lynda Cox, a critical care educator, scribbled: “All my children have been here, family members and friends died here. All my kids were hospitalized here and I’ve had all my surgery here.”

The move was bittersweet for some, such as food services worker Ronda Sanchez. “I grew up here,” she said. “I had my children here. I was born here. My great grandfather knows everyone here.”

But overall, Sanchez said she was delighted that the new hospital has air conditioning, unlike the old one. “Now we’ll give service with a real smile.”

The hospital staff had spent a year planning the move, devising emergency scenarios for an earthquake, fire or rain. The emergency room opened on schedule at 7 a.m., ready for its first crisis: a woman who walked in with gastritis at 8 a.m.

More than 50 volunteer Seabees from the Port Hueneme naval base helped staff members with heavy lifting of beds and equipment. Although there was a brief shower in the morning, the move was completed at 3:50 p.m. when the last patient was admitted in the new facility.

Hospital officials had estimated that they would transport their average residency of 150 patients from the old hospital. But St. John’s had stopped admitting patients for elective surgery on Wednesday to reduce the number that would need to be transported by ambulance.

The move came off without significant troubles and no patient’s condition was jeopardized, staff members said.

Yet Maria Veronica Zavala, 18, of Oxnard sent staff members scurrying when she went into full labor at 7:30 a.m., one hour before the move was to begin.

She was transported to the new facility where she gave birth to Natalie Crystal at 9:55 a.m. St. John’s President Daniel R. Herlinger presented the mother and newborn with flowers and a $200 U.S. Savings Bond to honor the first born at the new hospital.

Another woman, Gina Henze, 27, of Port Hueneme, who gave birth to Zachery Michael on Friday evening, was also given a savings bond and flowers for being the first patient admitted. She described the new hospital as a “palace.” The old hospital, she said, “looked like a jail.”

Alice Reisner, 76, said the day’s activities left her exhausted. But she was pleased with her new room. The Port Hueneme woman, who faces heart surgery on Monday, said she preferred her new room with a “big window that faces west and an attractive piece of art on the wall.”

But for some, such as Dr. Frederick England, who has been a physician at the hospital for 35 years, the new hospital has yet to prove its value. “One hundred and ten million dollars--that’s a lot of money,” England said. “We’ll be able to tell after sometime if it’s worth it.”

Settled in his new room after a bumpy ride in the ambulance, Dager had on a football game and finished off a chicken lunch. Pointing to the room’s walk-in shower, he remarked, “You don’t feel like you’re in a hospital. Even the bed’s better.”