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The new Allegiance Mobile Health ambulances are painted fire-engine red and have the words “Orange County Emergency Services District No. 1” prominently painted on their sides. They start rolling out for emergency services in the fire district on August 16th. Photo by George Garza
Plans are being finalized for a seamless transition of emergency medical services from Acadian Ambulance Service to Allegiance Mobile Health for all residents, visitors, and travelers in the Orange County Emergency Services District #1. That district covers nearly 160 square miles on the west side of Orange County and includes the cities of Vidor, Pine Forest and Rose City.
The transition in medical response is scheduled to take place on Sunday morning, August 16 sometime after dawn at a time to be announced.
“We are expecting the transition to be seamless and practically unnoticeable to the patrons of our district, with the exception of seeing a red ambulance rather than a white one and slightly better response times,” said OCESD#1 Fire Chief Robert Smith.
On June 16, 2020 the OCESD#1 Board of Commissioners voted four to zero with one commissioner absent to sign a contract with Allegiance Mobile Health to provide emergency and non-emergency ambulance services for the entire Emergency Services District starting on August 16, 2020. This change in ambulance service providers was made as a part of the mandated responsibility of the OCESD#1 to provide all of the citizens and residents of the emergency services district with the best possible emergency medical services that the fire district can provide within its budget. Prior to selecting Allegiance Mobile Heath as its new emergency medical service provider, the Board of Commissioners evaluated four ambulance providers offering emergency medical services in the Vidor area.
At that time, Commissioner Wyatt Boyett, President of the Board of Commissioners said, “We’ve had contact with three other providers. So what we are trying to do is to see which provider will offer the best emergency medical response service to the citizens of our district who might need their service. We are looking at response times, the number of ambulances they can provide, their bedside manner, their quality of patient care, their billing or costs to our citizens and how they get along with our fire crews. All of these things will be compared, side-by-side, and we will make a decision, as to which is the best provider for the citizens of our district.”
Among the reasons for selecting Allegiance Mobile Health was their willingness to provide four ambulances to serve the patrons of the Emergency Services District, with two of those ambulances being dedicated to emergency (9-1-1) medical calls, and the other two for non-emergency transport.
“The two dedicated 9-1-1 ambulances and their crews will be based at OCESD#1 Fire Station #1, right here on Highway 12,” said Commissioner Boyett.
Boyett said that on the first day of service for Allegiance Mobile Health, the ambulance company president has indicated that the ambulance provider will have three 9-1-1 ambulances and three ambulance crews on-duty, here in Vidor, ready to respond to emergency calls.
“Mr. Gillespie said they are going to start with three 9-1-1 ambulances just to see how the initial emergency call volume goes,” said Boyett. “If the call volume is low they will put the third ambulance back on transfers.”
According to Fire Chief Robert Smith, starting on August 16th, when residents of the E.S.D. or travelers traversing through the fire district pick up their phone to dial 9-1-1 for an emergency, that call will either be answered by 9-1-1 dispatchers at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office or by 9-1-1 dispatchers at the City of Vidor Police Department, depending on where the telephone call originates, either in the City of Vidor or outside of the City of Vidor.
The 9-1-1 dispatcher will ask the caller what is the nature of their emergency. If the caller responds that they are reporting a medical emergency, the 9-1-1 dispatcher will immediately switch that call to the Allegiance Mobile Health ambulance dispatcher who will verify the address of the emergency and find out how serious the medical emergency might be, while dispatching an ambulance from Fire Station #1. Within seconds after dispatching an ambulance, the Allegiance Mobile Heath dispatcher will also alert the fire department dispatchers that they have just dispatched an ambulance to a medical emergency in the fire district. The Fire Department will then dispatch either a fire truck or a fire district utility truck with a 9-1-1 certified paramedic aboard. The Chief said that callers should see no difference in the way their 9-1-1 calls are handled, just better response and better service.
Last week the OCESD#1 Fire Chief and Allegiance Mobile Health also finalized their plans to contract with Southeast Texas Air Rescue based at Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont to provide emergency aeromedical evacuation for seriously injured patients in the fire district. Chief Smith said that the average flight time from the Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital helipad in Beaumont to Fire Station #1 in Vidor is four minutes.