Ambulances will no longer provide a "taxi service" for people who call triple zero for non-emergency health issues.
Overworked and time-poor paramedics have expressed frustration that non-emergency health problems are delaying their responses to life-threatening cases.
Health Minister Jill Hennessy said paramedics deserved to be supported in what they do best, and directing non-critical cases to other health services such as local GPs or other health providers would ease their load.
Ambulance Victoria acting chief executive Tony Walker said out of the 500,000 emergency calls each year, 100,000 were cases that did not need emergency treatment.
He cited cases of people calling triple zero when they had a toothache, headache or a small cut on their finger.
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"Many people are just not sure what to do in an emergency ... We need to be blunt about this - ambulance services are not a taxi service," he said on Thursday.
The measures are part of a $60 million response time rescue fund, which was recommended in a report into ambulance services.
Opposition health spokeswoman Mary Wooldridge said it was good news that the funding they have been calling for has been brought forward.
But she said the Andrews government had made no real improvements to ambulance response times since coming to power 12 months ago.
