HEPBURN residents are waiting more than 18 minutes on average for an ambulance to arrive during code one emergencies.
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In comes as Ballarat itself recorded the second best response rate in country Victoria, but it's of little consequence for residents just outside the city limits.
And Ambulance Services Minister Jenny Mikakos admits more work is needed to help support outlying areas.
Ambulance Victoria figures from September to December show Hepburn average wait times of 18 minutes and 38 seconds. Only 34.4 per cent of all code one call outs are answered within 15 minutes.
And the figures are only marginally better in Golden Plains which sees average wait times of 17 minutes and 22 second and 39.5 per cent of call outs answered in 15 minutes.
In contrast, Ballarat residents are only waiting 10 minutes and 16 seconds with 90.5 per cent of calls responded to within 15 minutes, making the city second only to Warrnambool in all of regional Victoria.
Since 2014, Ballarat's response times figures have improved from 77 per cent response rate within 15 minutes of the first call while the average time has also fallen from 12 minutes 34 seconds to the current levels
Speaking in Ballarat on Friday, Ms Mikakos said the State Government would continue to invest in the service, but admitted more work was always needed to address problem regions.
"We've had 450 new paramedics rolled out that's benefited our ambulance branches right across Victoria," Ms Mikakos said.
"We're going to do further recruitment as part of a $109 million which we committed to at the last state election.
"Part of that, will be that many of our regional ambulance stations will go from being single crew to being duel crew which will help them with their response times as well.
"We're going to continue to invest in our lifesaving paramedics and that will help to address with response times."
Ms Mikakos said it was important to note the amount of call outs across the state could also skew final figures. While Ballarat received 1514 calls in the quarter, Golden Plains had just 190 and Hepburn 192.
"You do have to be a little bit cautious with some of the response data in smaller regional communities, but everyone in Ambulance Victoria is working incredibly hard to respond to emergency cases as quickly as possible," she said.
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