LGH senior administrative staff have also held preliminary talks with the Health Services community nursing arm to explore closer working relations.

And LGH head of medicine Alasdair Macdonald is looking at setting up a system which enables previous Hospital in the Home patients who are mobile to drop in to the hospital for treatment.

Dr Macdonald said that he was heartened by news yesterday that a number of community groups were considering major fund-raising and donations to the LGH to cover the cost of reinstating the defunct Hospital in the Home program.

``It would be lovely to be able to continue services like Hospital in the Home and if we did not have these budgetary constraints, we would not have considered dropping it,'' Dr Macdonald said.

But he urged those who needed to use Hospital in the Home services to contact their doctor or the LGH so that an individually tailored treatment program could be devised to replace what they had been receiving.

Bass Labor MHR and former LGH media officer Geoff Lyons said this week that the community might be better served by an improved community nursing service rather than a reinstated Hospital in the Home program.

Mr Lyons said that he would take the case of any community group prepared to fund-raise for the program to new federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek.

But he said that times had changed since the LGH originally sought Hospital in the Home funding nearly eight years ago.

Bass Liberal MHA Peter Gutwein said after meeting Launceston cystic fibrosis sufferer and Hospital in the Home campaigner Neale Atkins yesterday that money should be saved to reinstate the program by not replacing the state architect.

``The state architect has resigned effective almost immediately,'' Mr Gutwein said.

``Health Minister Michelle O'Byrne should demand that this position not be replaced and instead utilise the funds to continue the Hospital in the Home service.''