CAMARILLO : State Asked to Study Hospital Merger

Less than four weeks before the deal to merge Pleasant Valley Hospital and St. John’s Regional Medical Center is scheduled to be completed, the Camarillo Health Care District board has petitioned the state attorney general to investigate whether the merger is legal.

Following through on the board’s Oct. 23 decision to ask for the review, the health care district on Monday asked the state attorney general’s office in Los Angeles to investigate the issue.

Chester Horn Jr., a deputy attorney general, said he expects to make a decision on the legality of the merger of Oxnard’s St. John’s with Camarillo’s Pleasant Valley by the end of next week.

The petition asks the state to stop the merger to prevent St. John’s from converting Pleasant Valley into a nursing home or a rehabilitation center or to some use other than a full-service hospital.

The deed to Pleasant Valley’s land requires that it remain a hospital at least until Jan. 1, 1997. St. John’s officials have agreed to continue services that include emergency and obstetrics at Pleasant Valley for five years after the merger.

St. John’s officials hope to complete the deal at the first of the year, said Rita Schumacher, a spokeswoman for St. John’s.

But the Camarillo health district board argued in its petition that Pleasant Valley would violate the state’s charitable trust doctrine that governs nonprofit corporations if it became anything less than an acute-care hospital.

The nonprofit organization that owns the hospital was incorporated for the purpose of operating full-service hospitals, including at least one in Camarillo, according to the petition.