Merger of Hospitals Completed : Health: Consolidation of the Camarillo and Oxnard facilities takes place quietly, in contrast with earlier protests.

Pleasant Valley Hospital merged with St. John’s Regional Medical Center early Friday as scheduled, a deal that rolled the $44-million Camarillo hospital into a chain of 15 Roman Catholic medical centers.

In contrast with the protests against the merger that aired in community meetings, ballot booths and, ultimately, courtrooms, the hospital consolidation took place quietly in the Los Angeles offices of Pleasant Valley Hospital’s attorneys.

“It’s kind of anticlimactic,” said Sheryl Rudie, a Pleasant Valley Hospital spokeswoman.

Catholic Healthcare West, the San Francisco-based corporation that owns St. John’s in Oxnard and now Pleasant Valley, has pledged to continue operating the Camarillo hospital as a full-service medical center for at least five years.

Beyond that, Pleasant Valley Hospital will remain open as long as patients continue to use it, St. John’s officials said.

But such assurances did not comfort some of the Camarillo residents and physicians who had fought the merger since it was announced 13 months ago.

Dr. Richard Loft, 62, said there was a noticeable silence about the merger among hospital staff members and patients Friday.

“Everybody was kind of quiet about the whole topic,” said Loft, who has practiced at the hospital since it opened in 1974. “It’s a very sad thing. We did have a community hospital that was our pride and joy and that we had some say over its destiny. We no longer have that.”

Rather than give up on the hospital, Loft said Pleasant Valley’s medical staff is committed to improving services.

“We’re going to try and make the hospital even better than it was so there would be no way anybody would try to close it,” he said. “It’s a twofold responsibility: both the physicians and the community have to support it.”

Board members at the Camarillo Health Care District also expressed resignation Friday.

Three of the five board members were elected to their seats last November on their promises to fight the proposed merger at all costs. The district is a tax-supported agency that was formed to build the hospital in the early 1970s and spun it off as an independent facility in 1983.

But the health-care district board’s final attempt to delay the hospital consolidation apparently failed.

After the Ventura County Superior Court’s earlier refusal to block the hospital merger, health care district attorneys on Wednesday asked the state Supreme Court to delay the deal. District officials had not heard by late Friday whether the Supreme Court had ruled on their request, but they acknowledged that a decision would now be meaningless.

“The relief that we sought by way of injunction is moot,” health care district board member Jim Prosser said.

He added that the health-care district plans to pursue its lawsuit against Pleasant Valley Hospital officials over the merger.

One of those named in the lawsuit is Norman Gruber, who has headed Pleasant Valley Hospital since it opened 19 years ago and who engineered its consolidation with St. John’s.

Gruber is one of a handful of employees from the two hospitals who lost his job as a result of the merger, though he will continue to be paid by St. John’s until he finds another position.

He applauded the conclusion of the deal, reiterating his arguments that the merger was necessary to ensure Pleasant Valley Hospital’s long-term financial health.

“I think we have achieved what we set out to do, as rocky a road as it may have been,” Gruber said.

Gruber and hospital officials said patients will not see any major changes immediately in Pleasant Valley Hospital’s operation.

But some patients might notice that sterilization procedures, such as tubal ligations, are no longer offered at the hospital. Catholic Healthcare West forbids such procedures on religious grounds.

Of the seven nuns from the Sisters of Mercy order who work at St. John’s, one may move to Pleasant Valley’s personnel department, according to a spokeswoman for the Oxnard hospital.