OKTIBBEHA COUNTY – In Oktibbeha County, ambulance service provider Medstat EMS responds to between 1,800 and 2,100 emergency calls and hospital transports each year. Meanwhile in Starkville, Pafford EMS responds to nearly twice that, and seemingly does so 4-to-7-times faster on average.
The disparity has fueled questions about whether Oktibbeha County can sustainably support two ambulance providers long term and whether residents might be better served by a single system.
With MedStat’s contract set to expire at the end of June, Baptist Memorial Hospital-Oktibbeha County has requested proposals from three ambulance providers – MedStat, Pafford and Priority Ambulance – to determine whether MedStat, currently stationed at the hospital, will continue serving the county or if another company will take over.
Response times
One of many considerations for the hospital will be looking into each agencies’ response capabilities.
Data Oktibbeha County E-911 provided The Dispatch shows MedStat averaged about four minutes between dispatch and a unit reporting it was en route from January through September 2025.
During the final three months of the year, that average increased to about seven minutes. In total, the agency responded to 1,904 calls during the year.
By comparison, Pafford averaged about 27 seconds per response from January through September and slightly more than one minute during the final quarter of the year, while responding to 3,476 total calls in 2025.
MedStat Supervisor Stacy Permenter told The Dispatch in March the response-time data may not accurately reflect the company’s performance, citing ongoing radio communication issues between ambulance crews and E-911 dispatchers.
“Sometimes they’re saying they’re not hearing us, and sometimes we’re not hearing them,” Permenter told The Dispatch in a March interview. “So there’s a glitch somewhere, but nobody’s been able to figure out where it’s at.”
Permenter said radios in both ambulances have been reprogrammed and antennas replaced in an effort to resolve the issue – one Todd Palmer, Pafford’s supervisor in Starkville, said his people are not experiencing.
Permenter also said some delayed responses occur when MedStat crews are tied up on hospital transfers or other calls and unavailable to respond immediately. In those scenarios, he said, Pafford is called to provide mutual aid, though Pafford ambulances aren’t always available.
Palmer said Pafford has responded to roughly 15 mutual-aid requests from MedStat during the last three months. During that same period, he said, Pafford has not requested assistance from MedStat.
County Administrator Wayne Carpenter, who provided the response-time data to The Dispatch, cautioned that if the company does not respond to E-911 to signal an ambulance is enroute, or if the EMTs’ responses do not come across the radio, the company’s response times will appear longer.
However, MedStat declined to comment on the accuracy of the county’s reported response times and declined to share the company’s personally-collected data when asked by The Dispatch on Wednesday.
Carpenter said he was concerned about MedStat’s response times and ambulance availability, though he stressed those concerns remain largely anecdotal as the county works to improve how it tracks EMS performance.
“I have concerns about my volunteer firemen (many of them trained EMTs) waiting for extended periods of time on scene for an ambulance to arrive,” he told The Dispatch on Friday. “I have concerns about the availability of ambulances and the requirements for mutual aid, but right now, all of my concerns are anecdotal. I hear about the person who had to wait an hour – that’s not measurable performance standards.”
In response to inquiries into MedStat’s prolonged response times, Kim Alexander, director for public relations for Baptist Memorial Health Care, wrote in an email to The Dispatch that hospital staff were “aware of the emergency transport issues facing this community,” and that all options would be assessed to choose the “best solution for the region.”
One system or two?
MedStat has served Oktibbeha County and Mississippi State University since 2023, when the hospital was still under the moniker OCH Regional Medical Center. When that contract expired in the midst of county planning for the October sale of the hospital to Baptist in 2025, the county entered into another one-year agreement with MedStat, providing an annual subsidy of about $273,000.
The city first entered into its contract with Pafford in 2018 and does not provide a direct subsidy. Instead, the company operates out of two Starkville Fire Department stations.
But with one agency handling nearly twice the call volume of the other, some local leaders believe the community may be better served by a single ambulance provider.
Permenter said the issue is less about the number of ambulances available and more about how those resources are divided.
“This community is big enough for four ambulances, but where you run into the problem is you got one company over here with two and one company over here with two,” he told The Dispatch. “You may go two days and not do a call at all and then all of a sudden you have four calls at one time. That’s where, if it was one (ambulance provider), you have enough trucks to cover it. But with it being two different companies, then you’re constantly having to help each other out.”
Permenter said he “doesn’t see” how the market could comfortably sustain two ambulance providers long term. MedStat averages between 150 and 180 calls per month, less than what he described as the industry’s traditional benchmark for financial sustainability, which is 200 calls per month.
Palmer said he believes a single provider would simplify communication and deployment of resources.
“It’s easier for … 911 talking to just one agency,” he told The Dispatch on Wednesday. “If it’s one, they communicate together all the time and their resources are one that they can move in and out of.”
Carpenter said he believes a unified emergency services district involving Oktibbeha County, Starkville and Mississippi State University would provide more efficient service across the area.
“These folks are in the business to make money – plain and simple,” Carpenter said. “… If they don’t make money, they end up trying to … cut costs. Inevitably, service suffers. … I think both companies are impacted because there are economies of scale that are involved in this, and these economies of scale are not in our favor right now.”
Mayor Lynn Spruill agreed that a single-provider model could simplify dispatch and mutual-aid requests but said any provider would need sufficient resources to meet demand in Starkville.
“It probably would be ideal to have one, but whoever that one is, it’s got to have a very robust response capability,” Spruill told The Dispatch on Wednesday. “So obviously the city has the denser population, and so we would have that expectation that we would have … an adequate number of ambulances that are able to respond in a fairly tight time frame.”
Baptist’s decision could also affect Starkville, whose contract with Pafford expires in mid-July. Spruill said the city currently has “no incentive” to move away from Pafford but is watching the county’s decision closely.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 33 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
