Corryong Health chief executive Dominic Sandilands, who also chairs the Upper Murray Recovery Committee, said a lot of decisions were made at the time of the fire which did not factor in local context or knowledge.

Mr Sandilands said in the immediate aftermath of the fires workarounds were put in place to bypass the need for a GP referral for mental health support.

That workaround and the multitude of different services that moved into the region, created confusion and a lack of continuity of care.

"It caused more problems, more work, more effort, more confusion and less positive outcomes for the care so there was actually nothing positive gained from that approach," he said.

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In addition bushfire-specific medicare item numbers were developed to allow general practioners to claim for extended sessions related to the bushfires - but to do so they had to undertake a day of training which was not being offered, Mr Sandilands said.

The chief executive said the interventions were "well intentioned but misguided".

Mr Sandilands said at the time of the fire Corryong Health's GPs had been in the community for 10 to 20 years and knew residents and their medical histories intimately.

But this resources was not used.

"We were left to kind of piece together all the care of our clients," he said. "We're the local people, we're the local content for our community and we were the last ones to find out if someone was receiving care, and what that care involved and who was involved it that care."

Mr Sandilands said the service was still " cleaning up pieces" of the confusion.

Within the last 18 months, there have been four suicides in the Corryong community, Mr Sandilands and Towong Shire mayor David Wortmann told the inquiry.

"These events are certainly higher than average for a community of our size and there is no doubt that there is a link to traumatic impacts, all of this I think underscores the importance of mental health services," Mr Sandilands said.

But there is very little funding committed beyond the end of the year.

"I'm quite concerned form a health service point of view that we won't have the adequate funds to maintain our services," he said.

"In reality we have to provide the services anyway, and in effect that would require us to be shifting funds out of aged care which is also under stress, into mental health service delivery."

Mr Wortmann agreed sustained funding was essential.

"Multi-year funding for mental health services is urgently required to allow our health services to recruit qualified practitioners to our isolated communities," he said. "Stability is needed so relationships can be developed between patient and practitioner.

"We really do not know how deep the underlying problem of mental health issues are within our communities post bushfires."

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