In a budget estimates hearing in the State Parliament this morning, department secretary Kathrine Morgan-Wicks was grilled on the Tasmanian Health Service's response to the disturbing allegations regarding the child sex abuse offences the late Mr Griffin is alleged to have committed on Ward 4K, where he worked.

Greens health spokeswoman Rosalie Woodruff asked how many children had been through the ward in the 18 years Mr Griffin - who died last year before facing trial - had worked there.

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Health Minister Sarah Courtney said she didn't have the information at hand.

"I don't think we would even have a system to be able to track [that] over what is an extensive period of time," she said, prompting scepticism from Dr Woodruff.

Ms Morgan-Wicks told the hearing that she didn't have the numbers Dr Woodruff had asked for either.

"[It] would require trying to piece together rostering information of Mr Griffin over an extensive period of time, when we know that that information is not currently available to us in a single source of our information system," she said.

The secretary added that funding in the 2020-21 state budget would provide for the creation of new human resources systems within the THS that would help address this problem.

"It's a significant investment that is being made into HR systems, which we have tried to piece together in terms of both electronic [and] paper records and also verbal records in terms of staff members involved in the Mr Griffin matter," she said.

Dr Woodruff replied that that work should be done "sooner rather than later".

"Allegations were made that complaints [about Mr Griffin] were made as early as 2002-2003," she said. "So we are talking about complaints of alleged abuse happening 18 years ago and I think it is important to understand the exposure that that abuser had to children and what numbers we're talking about."

Meanwhile, further details were revealed about a police investigation in the wake of Mr Griffin's death. The estimates committee heard that Tasmania Police first received a complaint about Mr Griffin in May 2019 and that following his death that October, provided photographic evidence, understood to have been from Mr Griffin's phone, to select Ward 4K staff so that they might identify potential victims of the nurse.

"I'm informed from my internal review that on 29 October, 2019, the THS was contacted by Tasmania Police to inform the hospital that alleged child exploitation photographic material had been uncovered during their investigation and to request assistance from the THS to identify children in the photographs, which were alleged to be in the hospital setting," Ms Morgan-Wicks said.

Three patients were identified via this process, according to the secretary.

It was also confirmed the department was aware of nine complaints about Mr Griffin that had been lodged over the 27 years he worked for the THS, but Ms Morgan-Wicks clarified that there wasn't anything that had indicated "serious sexual criminal abuse" and that they amounted to "professional nursing boundary complaints".

Premier Peter Gutwein announced today that the state government would establish a commission of inquiry into historical allegations of child sexual abuse in government institutions, such as state schools, public hospitals and the Ashley Youth Detention Centre.

A commission of inquiry is the Tasmanian equivalent of a royal commission and is the state's highest form of public inquiry. It has the power to call witnesses and order the production of documents.

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