A Healthy Outlook : Camarillo: After losing hospital merger battle, the health care district focuses on different programs, including adult day care, for area’s 75,000 people.

For 78-year-old Sophie Lebetkin, the chance to once again kick up her heels as a big-band number came wafting from the stereo at Club Camarillo was just too much to resist.

A former Radio City Music Hall Rockette, Lebetkin is now a regular at the senior social club offered weekdays through the Camarillo Health Care District.

And although she may not have the same kick as she once did on stage in New York, she was holding her own on a recent afternoon as she gracefully moved across the small dance floor.

“I come here two or three times a week,” Lebetkin said. “I come because I love the dancing but also because I love the people here.”

A state licensed adult day-care center, Club Camarillo is one of several programs offered by the 33-year-old district--an agency initially formed by Camarillo civic leaders for the purpose of building what is now St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo.

Having built the Las Posas Road facility in 1973, the district and its hospital flourished for several years. But in 1983, the district allowed the hospital to become its own private, nonprofit corporation with its own board of directors.

In 1992, the hospital’s board, against the wishes of health care district board members, decided to accept the terms of a proposed merger between Pleasant Valley and Catholic Healthcare West, the parent organization of St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard. That action touched off a vicious two-year legal skirmish between the two agencies.

Fearing the merger would ultimately cause Camarillo to lose vital medical services, the district spent an estimated $225,000 in legal fees fighting the move. The conflict officially ended in March, 1993, when Ventura County Superior Court Judge Frederick Jones dismissed the district’s last legal attempt to block the merger.

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Since then, officials with the taxpayer-supported district have turned their attention toward serving a population of 75,000 people who live in the greater Camarillo and Somis areas.

“It was like a war. They won,” said John Rush, president of the district’s board of directors. “We can honestly say we gave it our best shot, but it’s now time to put that behind us and move on. It’s our goal now to fill in the niches that St. John’s will not or cannot provide.”

The district’s largest program is its low-cost, door-to-door bus service that provides transportation for the disabled clients and the elderly. On average, the service logs about 1,300 passenger trips every month, according to Jane Rozanski, the district’s executive director.

The district, with its five-member board and $1.2-million budget, has focused the majority of its services on the elderly but is now exploring ways to increase programs to meet the needs of younger adults and teen-agers, Rozanski said. All of the programs and services are either free or low-cost and district policy forbids anyone from being turned away because they can’t pay.

The district provides counseling programs, cancer screening clinics, podiatric care, field trips and nutrition seminars. Additionally, the district runs a program that arranges in-home care for the homebound or medically frail.

“Lifeline,” an electronic 24-hour in-home emergency response service and a telephone-accessed library that provides taped messages on hundreds of medical subjects are two other programs the district manages.

Rozanski said that since the high-profile, headline-grabbing days that accompanied the district’s anti-merger legal challenge, the district has quietly strived to expand programs and services.

“We’ve been referred to lately as the stealth district,” Rozanski said. “Obviously, our clients know who we are, but outside of that, few people know we exist. This is something we’re aiming to change.”

One new program designed to expand the district’s array of services works to contract with outside organizations such as the Wellness Community, the American Heart Assn. and the Ventura County Senior Nutrition program. So far, $32,000 in grants to the nonprofit agencies has been disbursed.

Of the 73 health care districts in the state, the Camarillo agency is one of 10 that formerly ran hospitals but now concentrate on services for the elderly, wellness health practices and other non-acute medical services.

According to Victor Biswell, president of the California Assn. of Hospital Districts, the Camarillo agency is known statewide as a leader in providing secondary or non-acute health services.

“They’re far out in front in terms of the array of services they are providing,” Biswell said. “In my opinion, they are a model that the other nine districts who do not have hospitals should follow.”

In a room just off the district’s cramped offices, Lucille Hansen can only sit in her chair as the words and the music of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” come off a nearby Karaoke machine.

Still, the medically fragile 85-year-old has a wide smile on her face as her friends and fellow seniors croon and shuffle their way in time to the singer’s signature ballad.

“Everyone’s so nice. Everyone’s so very friendly,” said Hansen, who has been coming to the club for about a year. “I feel so at home here.”

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Linda Sharp, one of the club’s two program coordinators, said about a dozen seniors attend the program daily. She said the activities are designed to stimulate their minds and to provide gentle exercise and companionship.

“Their care-givers tell us that they see marked differences in their sleeping and eating patterns after only a few weeks,” Sharp said. “They grow more alert and seem to be happier, generally.”

For Charleen Behrschmidt, Lucille Hansen’s daughter, the district’s services have had a profound impact.

“This program has meant the difference between her continuing to live with us or living in a nursing home,” Behrschmidt said. “It has taken so much of the pressure off our situation and has made our relationship much richer.”