CAMARILLO : Hearing Today on Hospital Merger

A Ventura County Superior Court judge will hold a hearing today on whether to delay the merger of Pleasant Valley Hospital with St. John’s Regional Medical Center, a deal scheduled to close in less than two weeks.

Judge Barbara Lane will review the Camarillo Health Care District’s request for a temporary restraining order postponing the planned Jan. 28 merger of the Camarillo hospital with the Oxnard medical center.

Health care district officials want to block the merger until a judge has ruled on a lawsuit filed by the district on Wednesday.

“Unless the merger is delayed, there will be irreparable harm to the people that use the hospital,” said Eve Triffo, attorney for the health care district.

Triffo said the district will argue that the merger would prevent Pleasant Valley Hospital patients from receiving sterilization procedures, mainly tubal ligations, at the facility because the Roman Catholic St. John’s forbids such services.

Pleasant Valley Hospital performs more than 100 tubal ligations a year, Triffo said.

An attorney for the San Francisco-based Catholic Healthcare West, which owns St. John’s, confirmed that sterilization procedures could not be performed at Pleasant Valley after the merger.

The health care district’s lawsuit also argues that St. John’s ultimately plans to convert Pleasant Valley from a full-service hospital to a rehabilitation center or another non-hospital use, which would violate the hospital’s founding charter, Triffo said.

St. John’s has committed to keeping Pleasant Valley a full-service hospital for at least five years after the merger.