By JOEL PHELPS | arkadelphian.com
ARKADELPHIA, Arkansas — Official documents have given validity to social media claims that Pafford Emergency Medical Services is slower to respond to medical emergencies in Clark County than its previous ambulance provider, Baptist Health.
A review of ambulance services by Clark County’s Emergency Communication Center since it became fully operational in February sheds light on the response time by Pafford, one of two providers vying for an extended contract with Clark County to respond to emergency medical calls.
The county’s two 911 dispatch centers, or Public Safety Answering Points, merged into a singular communication center on Feb. 21, 2025. Weeks later, in an unrelated move between two private companies, Baptist Health sold its ambulance fleet to Pafford EMS, which began local service on the morning of April 5.
The 911 center’s review — obtained under the auspices of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act — includes a summary of calls for Baptist’s final six weeks as ambulance provider, as well as calls for Pafford from April 5 – July 31. The full document, with patient names redacted, is included below and begins on Page 3:
For Baptist, the log showed 115 calls for ambulance service, an average of three calls per day. The report notes that the logs do not include calls in Hot Spring County, where Baptist manned a station in Bismarck, nor does it include calls that Pafford responded to in Amity, which Pafford has generally serves from a station in nearby Glenwood, Pike County.
The log for Pafford’s first four months serving Clark County showed 514 calls, an average of four calls per day.
According to the county data, Baptist’s response time was 7-17 minutes, with no extended estimated times for arrival found in the log.
Pafford’s response time was 3-50 minutes, with several occurrences in which there were no available ambulances in the county response area.
The report goes on to detail nearly 20 occurrences when Pafford extended its arrival time or had “other issues” while responding to calls. The following is a summary of some of those calls:
• It took Pafford 25 minutes to arrive to an Arkadelphia call of a “sick person.”
• On April 21, Pafford had one ambulance in the county when, during a 20-minute window, three separate 911 calls were made in Gurdon (wreck with injuries), Arkadelphia (structure fire) and Manchester (patient fell). Pafford advised county dispatchers it would send ambulances from Prescott and Emmet.
• A stroke patient in Amity was driven by personal vehicle to a Hot Springs hospital when a first responder is advised of Pafford’s estimated arrival time. The log shows that Pafford’s dispatch center sent an ambulance six minutes after Clark County’s dispatcher advised the location and reason of call.
• Another Amity patient — this one suffering a heart attack — was also taken to the hospital by personal vehicle once first responders were made aware of an “extended” ETA for an ambulance coming from Murfreesboro.
• Patients injured in a two-car wreck at Pine and Walnut streets in Arkadelphia were driven by personal vehicle to the local hospital when Pafford advised of a 40-minute ETA. An Arkadelphia policeman followed the patients to Baptist Health Medical Center-Arkadelphia and noted a pair of Pafford ambulances in the hospital parking lot.
• Pafford canceled a call, apparently on its own accord, following a call to Walmart for a customer who had passed out. Arkadelphia firemen arrived to the scene first, with a Pafford unit, having heard the call on the local scanner, advising they would be en route a minute later; within the same minute Pafford’s dispatcher instructed the unit to stand down, canceling the call. Apparently unaware of the cancellation, AFD asked county dispatch for an ETA of an ambulance, learning within four minutes that Pafford had canceled the call. AFD then called Valor EMS, which showed up within 5 minutes (17 minutes after the original call was initiated).
• It took a Pafford ambulance crew 50 minutes to arrive to a call on Witherspoon Road, a gravel county road just across the Ouachita River bridge from Arkadelphia.
• A Pafford ambulance crew had a response time of 25 minutes to a call “within the city limits” of Arkadelphia, a dispatcher canceling the first ambulance and sending another midway through the call.
• It took 31 minutes for a Pafford ambulance to arrive at a Manchester residence for a call of heat exhaustion.
A more harrowing account is detailed in a two-page memo outlining a patient who died at the hospital following a health episode and subsequent experience with a pair of Pafford EMTs. In sum, a pair of deputy sheriffs assisted the EMTs at their request as they reportedly struggled to administer aid to a patient. The deputies performed CPR on the patient while the EMTs discussed medical conditions with the spouse. The memo, signed by each deputy, notes that the EMTs struggled with medical equipment, running to and from the ambulance in search of a battery. A policeman ultimately installed the battery to get the machine to operate, and a deputy took control of the equipment.
Once the EMTs loaded the patient into the ambulance — it reportedly took them multiple failed attempts — a deputy was asked to ride in the back to help en route to the hospital; he did, and on the way the EMT reportedly admitted that the medical crew “almost stopped and called it in the house and just waited on the coroner” rather than transport the patient, who was pronounced deceased at the hospital.
Sheriff Jason Watson told The Arkadelphian it’s common practice for law enforcement to use their own training and lifesaving skills on a patient until an ambulance arrives at a medical emergency. “It’s expected [of law enforcement], and it’s the right thing to do,” Watson said. “Once an ambulance is on the scene, we don’t stop — we will shift to a support role and assist where necessary.
The sheriff added: “We’re always going to do whatever we can to save someone’s life, and if the deputy sees an obvious issue they are going to step in. I wouldn’t expect anything different.”
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