Indigo Council locks in meeting with Victorian Ambulance Services Minister Jenny Mikakos over ambulance response times

It comes as more stories of residents personally affected, including one case where a woman with a broken hip waited three hours for an ambulance, come to light.

Indigo Mayor Bernard Gaffney said with the support of Upper House MPs Tania Maxwell and Tim Quilty, the meeting had been locked in for August 14.

"The main question that I'll be asking is, 'Why does Indigo Shire have the worst emergency response in the state of Victoria?'" he said.

"We've met with Ambulance Victoria and they have first of all said landscape, but have then said it was a resourcing issue.

"The community is saying 'We pay taxes like everybody else, why are we treated so poorly?'

"Ambulance Victoria has said nobody has died in pain, but to lie on the ground with a broken hip for three hours is third world."

Cr Gaffney said at the minimum he wanted to see a new ambulance station in the shire.

"The resourcing in Indigo is ridiculous; there's one ambulance and one paramedic, based in Beechworth," he said.

"There are two volunteer (community emergency response team) groups, in Yackandandah and Chiltern, who do a great job.

"But the response times include when they arrive, so the ambulance won't get there for a long time after."

Cr Gaffney said 27 per cent of code 1 cases being responded to within 15 minutes in his shire compared to 44 per cent for Towong and even higher for Alpine, which "has a much larger landscape".

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"They have three ambulances ... Towong has a better response than Indigo and then have two ambulances," he said.

"We have large frontage to the Hume Highway and to the Murray River, and the recent festival at Rutherglen had 20,000 people attend, so all of those things have to be taken into account.

"I just want the minister to understand that."

Cr Gaffney and Indigo chief executive Trevor Ierino will meet with Ms Mikakos in August, and Ms Maxwell has also been invited.

The Wangaratta MP said in parliament in May that improving the code 1 response time was imperative due to the direct link between the timeliness of treatment and patient outcome.

Ambulance Victoria Hume regional director Matt Chadban said in February "improving response performance in large geographic areas with a relatively low number of code 1 call outs presents a challenge".

Indigo's response compares to more than 70 per cent in Wangaratta.

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