Indigo's mayor and deputy mayor have stood by their claim that a patient died in hospital after waiting an hour for an ambulance, speaking for the first time since Ambulance Victoria said the incident never happened.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
This meant Ambulance Victoria could not find any record of the call in its system.
Cr Price has been criticised for not responding to this dispute, but chose to speak out at Tuesday night's December Indigo Council meeting.
"I am sticking by this family, the veracity of this incident - I don't need to go back and forth with Ambulance Victoria about that," she said.
"I expected that we would be an ally of Ambulance Victoria when I raised this incident. I thought we would stand beside them and say 'we would support you in whatever further resourcing for the branches you might require to help improve the response times'."
Cr Bernard Gaffney said Ambulance Victoria's comments insinuated councillors had made up the call.
He asked Cr Price if she knew the people involved, the address it occurred, a rough date of the call and if she would recognise the call if she looked at the ambulance logs. After each question, she responded "yes".
"I certainly value absolutely the value and importance of our Community Emergency Response Teams, of our ambulance community officers, of our paramedics. I think they all have really tough jobs and tough volunteer roles and really support people in their time of need when they do make that triple zero call," Cr Price said.
"I stand by my decision not to identify the family.
"I think when people raise something with you and they ask that it's kept confidential, that's absolutely what I would intend to do with that information.
"They're a grieving family leading up to Christmas. We're all aware of someone in that situation or we've been there ourselves."
Statistics show that ambulances arrive at code 1 incidents in Indigo Shire within 15 minutes just 24 per cent of the time, which Cr Price said was the critical issue.
"This is only going to be a much bigger issue if we don't have a real plan for how we're going to bring our critical response time up to at least the same as the state average of 85 per cent (arriving within 15 minutes)," she said.
"I'm pleased that this issue is being discussed because ... this incident has been around a long time and is not just isolated to Indigo"
Indigo Shire has a Community Emergency Response Team, made up of volunteers who respond to triple zero calls, rather than qualified paramedics.
Mayor Jenny O'Connor said the two volunteers were "very well-meaning, well-intentioned and well-skilled", but were limited.
They cannot administer drugs, set an IV drip or drive over the speed limit to get to hospital and are limited to CPR and defibrillation.
"That's really unfair both on the patients requiring emergency services and on the volunteers trying to provide something that actually requires a much higher level of qualification," she said.
"We're receiving a third-rate service in Indigo Shire."
Council and Ambulance Victoria representatives will meet on Monday.