Earlier this week, Indigo Shire mayor Bernard Gaffney and Ms Maxwell both said they were angry and frustrated that Indigo Shire had once again recorded the worst response times in the state for code one calls for help.

On average, it took Ambulance Victoria 25 minutes 35 seconds to arrive at an emergency call-out - 3 minutes 16 seconds longer than a year ago. It took more than 56 minutes to arrive at a code two (acute, non-critical) call-out.

Ms Maxwell said at Beechworth on Friday she had arranged a meeting with Minister for Health Mary-Anne Thomas to continue conversations about the crisis gripping Indigo.

"I met with mayor Gaffney in 2019 when we had Jenny Mikakos as the minister and we raised these issues then," Ms Maxwell said.

"What are the solutions? We can't just keep complaining about this system. One of them is HMS Community are doing this paramedic work already in other areas.

"We're calling on the government to fund them to help mitigate this crisis in Indigo."

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HMS Community co-chief executive officer Ranee Wilkinson, who is a former nurse, said the group has helped with paramedic care in other parts of the state such as Wangaratta but a lack of funding has stymied their efforts in Indigo Shire.

"I live in Beechworth so I know how chronic this problem is and that the only way to alleviate it is to rely on community services to provide urgent help to people who need," Ms Wilkinson said.

"Unfortunately we don't have anyone on the ground in Indigo at this point to assist, but we're trying to get trained people to help with this.

"We do need government funding to make this happen but as we're a non-profit organisation, this has not been forthcoming."

Ambulance Victoria said one of the causes for its alarming response slide in Indigo was a 19.3 per cent increase in life-threatening cases since the same quarter last year.

"But that amounts in reality to just 33 extra cases in a 91-day period - or one more case every three days," Ms Maxwell said. "To make an average total call-out of 2.25 cases every day. It's hardly city-level demand.

"Paramedics are doing their absolute best to respond to these critical emergency calls."

Cr Gaffney said the crisis stemmed from a chronic lack of resources and that he was "tired of Indigo always being rock-bottom" every time ambulance call-out figures were released.

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