Fate of Arkadelphia ambulance service in limbo as ProMed withdraws offer; 2 companies now vying for coverage

Shutterstock image of an ambulance in motion

By JOEL PHELPS | arkadelphian.com

Which ambulance service will respond to medical emergencies in Clark County come early April 2025? The answer should be official in coming days. In the meantime, here’s what we know about recent ambulance activity:

On the morning of Wednesday, March 26, ProMed Ambulance Inc. rescinded its offer to purchase the Baptist Health ambulance service in Arkadelphia, just shy of two weeks after a joint announcement of the pending sale. ProMed President and CEO Ken Kelley told The Southern Standard that the company withdrew its offer after deciding that the move would not be a good fit for the Arkadelphia community.

Kelley told the newspaper the decision to rescind “wasn’t [because of] a problem with the service or the equipment, we just didn’t feel that we could offer the same level that the community is used to receiving. It would have been a big change for the community and we didn’t want to start off with a level of distrust.”

The Arkadelphian would later learn that all but one Baptist medic declined employment with ProMed after the company informed staff that the transition would come with about a 25% cut to their salaries.

Since the 1990s Baptist Health has operated its ambulance service in Clark County under an agreement that, until 2018, had been renewed annually. The agreement had been for the hospital to provide 911 ambulance coverage for the county.

The decision on who will be the next primary ambulance service comes down to at least two potential candidates: Pafford EMS or Valor EMS.

Pafford’s footprint expands in states throughout the Midwest, and serves multiple counties throughout Southwest Arkansas. Valor, on the other hand, is a locally owned and operated ambulance service that was established in 2022.

Earlier in March, Valor was offered a contract to serve Dallas County, according to J.D. Windham, who co-owns Valor alongside his wife, Kristen. Effective April 15, Valor will replace ProMed, which was ousted in a unanimous decision by Dallas County justices of the peace in a March meeting.

Windham said Valor remains committed to Clark County despite its contract in Dallas County, as his company is capable of staffing both counties. Valor’s current role in Clark County is covering overflow calls when the call volume is too high for Baptist’s resources. Valor aids Baptist about 500-600 times per year, Windham said. Valor serves as the secondary 911 ambulance service in Clark, Dallas and Hot Spring counties, as well as in Hot Springs, and provides hospital-to-hospital transfers throughout a wider region.

Pafford has been in operation for 57 years, according to its website. With a regional office in Hope, Pafford provides ambulance services in the South Arkansas cities of Hope, Prescott, Murfreesboro, Nashville and Ashdown.

Greg Stubblefield, vice president at Baptist Health, said a decision should be reached within a week, and iterated that, regardless of a pending sale, Clark County’s ambulance service will be covered.

The Southern Standard’s Joe May contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: In an effort to understand why Dallas County terminated its services with ProMed, we submitted a Freedom of Information Act request on Monday, March 24, to obtain an audio recording of that meeting. We were instructed to deliver a USB flash drive to the courthouse in Fordyce, where the file would be transferred to the device and submitted to us within the three-day timeframe in accordance with the law. It had not yet arrived in our mailbox by Thursday afternoon.