In Question Time in the House of Assembly on Wednesday, Labor leader Rebecca White asked Health Minister Sarah Courtney why $260,000 was being spent on a new health bureaucrat while 11-year-old Spencer waited 14 months for surgery.

"How can you justify appointing a new, highly paid bureaucrat when nearly 10 000 people are waiting for surgery and you are slashing the health budget and cutting jobs?" Ms White asked.

"Can you advise when Spencer will receive his surgery?"

Ms Courtney said she had spoken to Spencer's mother and that "all Tasmanians would be very distressed about the circumstances that Spencer, his parents and family found themselves in".

"We have been continuing to engage with Spencer and his family through clinicians, through my office, and as has been highlighted, I have spoken to Spencer's mum - to discuss the circumstances and I have enormous empathy for her."

Ms Courtney said health leaders took Spencer's cases and others "very seriously".

She said it was appropriate that clinicians decided the priority of cases but that a review was being done of Spencer's case.

Spencer needs the skin grafts he received after he survived an arson attack to be modified as he grows.

His mother Alison McGee said she was not surprised Ms Courtney had called her after Spencer's need for surgery received media coverage in the Advocate in September and the ABC more recently.

"I put the hard word on her and she went very quiet," Ms McGee said.

"It wouldn't have looked good for her if she hadn't rung.

"I was pleased with the call and that she had acknowledged us."

Ms White said it was "alarming that a young child who needs a skin graft has to wait 14 months and still has no date for surgery".

"This family is waiting for far too long and this little boy deserves so much better," she said.

"I recall a time where if Tasmanian hospitals couldn't provide surgery like that we'd negotiate with our mainland counterparts, the children's hospital in Melbourne for instance, to arrange a transfer so that child could have a skin graft in a timely fashion."

Ms McGee said she has had an appointment brought forward from December to November.

She said she did not believe surgery interstate was an option because of the follow up care that Spencer needed.

"It would be easy to send him to any other state but he needs that followup care and that will be ongoing," Ms McGee said.

"That surgery will continue and maybe beyond his growing years. He has no ear lobes and may decide when he is older that he wants to have them fixed when he is fully grown."

The delay in his surgery has been likened to forcing him to wear jeans that fitted him years ago.