Effect of State Ruling on Hospital Merger Debated : Health care: Attorney general’s order may require the chain that owns St. John’s to operate Pleasant Valley as a full-service facility.

The state attorney general’s office issued a ruling Monday on the proposed merger of hospitals in Camarillo and Oxnard that may require the Camarillo facility to continue operating indefinitely as a full-service hospital.

In his ruling, Deputy Atty. Gen. Chester Horn Jr. said St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard will have to continue operating “at least one general acute care facility serving Camarillo” following its planned merger with Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo.

The hospital chain that owns St. John’s has promised to buy the assets of Pleasant Valley Hospital in a merger that is scheduled to be completed next month. Because of legal ambiguities in Horn’s decision, both proponents and opponents of the hospital merger claimed the ruling as a triumph for their side.

“This is a victory,” said Eve Triffo, an attorney representing the Camarillo Health Care District, which had petitioned the state attorney general to rule against the hospital merger. “This should put a wrench in the merger process.”

Triffo suggested that St. John’s may decide to abandon the merger if forced to indefinitely operate Pleasant Valley as a full-service hospital, which would include an emergency room, surgery and other acute care services.

She also said that the health care district board may decide at its meeting tonight to use the state attorney general’s decision as ammunition to seek a court-imposed delay of the merger so it could be reviewed further.

But officials at St. John’s and Pleasant Valley said the merger is still scheduled to close in mid- to late January.

“The hospitals, I can tell you, are not prepared to back off,” said Daniel B. Higgins, an attorney for Pleasant Valley Hospital. He said hospital officials are “fully prepared” to fight the case in court, if necessary.

But hospital officials said they plan to cooperate with the attorney general’s ruling, even though they are not legally bound to do so. The state attorney general’s office does not have the power to enforce its ruling, although it could take St. John’s to court if hospital administrators ignore the decision, Horn said.

Higgins also disputed Triffo’s interpretation that the decision would require St. John’s to maintain Pleasant Valley as a full-service hospital.

According to the ruling, St. John’s must only include a clause in its charter stating that it will operate “at least one general acute care facility serving Camarillo.”

Higgins said St. John’s could add the clause to its charter without being committed to continue Pleasant Valley as a full-service hospital.

The clause does not require that the hospital serving Camarillo residents be located in Camarillo, Higgins said.

“It says ‘serving,’ ” he said, a need that could be fulfilled by St. John’s. He pointed out that many Camarillo residents already rely on St. John’s, which is about eight miles away from Pleasant Valley Hospital.

But Triffo said that substituting St. John’s for Pleasant Valley as Camarillo’s full-service hospital would ignore the intent of the legal clause sought by the state.

Health care district officials and other Camarillo residents opposed to the merger have protested that St. John’s, which is owned by the San Francisco-based Catholic Healthcare West, will convert Pleasant Valley Hospital into a rehabilitation center, a nursing center or to some other non-hospital use.

St. John’s is restricted from any quick conversion because the deed to Pleasant Valley Hospital’s property requires that it remain a full-service hospital until Jan. 1, 1997.

As part of the merger, St. John’s officials have agreed not to cut services at the Camarillo hospital even after Jan. 1, 1997, unless the number of patients drops significantly, said Sheryl Rudie, a spokeswoman for Pleasant Valley.