AMBULANCE Victoria (AV) says it can find no record of a reported incident in Indigo Shire of an ambulance taking an hour to reach a cardiac arrest patient, who later died in hospital.
AV executive director of clinical services, Mick Stephenson, said an extensive search of both patient and dispatch records from recent months hadn’t found a match to the reported incident.
“We can’t find a case that even remotely resembles the case as described....to that extent, we believe, the case doesn’t exist,” he said.
AV investigations were prompted after Indigo Shire deputy mayor Cr Sophie Price revealed the reported incident during last week’s council meeting.
Mr Stephenson said AV had contacted Indigo Shire for more specific information around the incident - such as date, location - to assist its investigation, but council had declined.
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Mayor O’Connor has confirmed council received correspondence from Ambulance Victoria however said she is not privy to the specific details of this incident.
“Council is in no-way refusing to cooperate with Ambulance Victoria and we look forward to meeting with its executive officers,” she said in a statement.
“I will continue to lobby on behalf of the Indigo community about ambulance response times which are well below the state average and simply unacceptable,” she said.
Cr O’Connor said she welcomed the offer from Ambulance Victoria for its executive staff to brief council on what is being done to improve patient care.
Further update in next week’s Ovens and Murray Advertiser.
