Ambulances sit parked outside in the weather at the leased facility Allegiance Mobile Health currently uses in Jasper County, and district secretary-treasurer James Gunter says the company has run out of room inside. Jasper Hospital District leaders are now moving to convert an existing warehouse into a new EMS station, aiming to give the growing ambulance operation a permanent home.
As reported by 12newsnow, James Gunter, secretary-treasurer of the Jasper Hospital District, said Allegiance has simply outgrown its leased building. Crews have limited space to work with, and the ambulances themselves have nowhere covered to sit between calls, he said. District leaders say the current facility no longer meets the needs of an operation that keeps expanding year after year.
A Fleet That Has More Than Doubled
Allegiance Mobile Health signed its contract with the Jasper Hospital District nearly five years ago, according to Daniel Gillespie, and the operation has grown from five ambulances to 11 units since then. The company also now runs a battalion chief's vehicle serving Jasper County. Gillespie said Allegiance is handling about 200 more patient encounters per month than it was during the same period the year before, a rise that has strained the current space.
Crews working 24-hour shifts need somewhere quiet to rest between emergency calls, Gillespie said, but the current facility is loud and crowded, making that rest difficult. He said proper downtime is not a luxury but a safety issue — crews need adequate sleeping quarters and real recovery time to be ready when the next 911 call comes in.
What the Renovation Would Add
The proposed renovation would give EMS crews more room to work and live between calls, while also providing covered space to store and protect expensive emergency equipment. Gunter said the project could cost between $500,000 and $750,000, though hospital district officials are still waiting on building plans before moving forward with the renovation.
Rodney Norsworthy, president of the Jasper Hospital District, said emergency medical services deserve a permanent home just like fire departments, law enforcement and other public safety agencies already have. He said a properly equipped, permanent facility could also help Allegiance recruit and retain qualified paramedics in Jasper County, where the district's underlying goal, he said, is straightforward: keeping patients alive long enough to reach a hospital.
Why Jasper's Ambulance Network Keeps Expanding
That goal carries extra weight in a county where residents may have to travel to Beaumont or Lufkin just to reach a major hospital. Jasper's EMS buildout fits into a broader pattern of rural ambulance expansion across the county. In Jasper County Emergency Services District 3, a taxpayer-funded partnership with Allegiance Mobile Health that launched in late October 2025 now provides 24/7 ambulance coverage to rural areas, a move officials told ems1.com was intended to improve response times and care for residents living outside city limits.
Further south, Jasper County Emergency Services District No. 2 partnered with Allegiance Ambulance Service to bring an ambulance station to Evadale for the first time, according to a report from Yahoo News. The outlet reported that residents there had often waited 20 to 30 minutes for ambulances coming from neighboring Orange and Jasper counties before the new service began, and that crews responded to their first emergency call within 30 minutes of the service agreement being finalized. That Evadale service is funded in part through a sales tax voters had approved the previous year.
The push for better emergency access in Jasper County extends beyond ambulance response. A 2023 Texas Tribune report found that women in the area travel more than an hour to Lufkin or Beaumont for maternity care, after Jasper Memorial Hospital closed its labor and delivery unit in 2019 and joined the roughly 60% of rural Texas hospitals that no longer deliver babies. More than three years after that closure, the Tribune reported, the unit remained shut. Statewide EMS performance, including response, scene and transport times, is tracked by trauma service area through a dashboard maintained by the Texas Department of State Health Services.
