The Launceston General Hospital has the highest number of emergency department presentations waiting for longer than 24 hours across Tasmania's four hospitals
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Last year the LGH saw more than 2600 ED presentations waiting for longer than 24 hours for hospital admission compared to the state capital's Royal Hobart Hospital which saw 1940 presentations in the same period.
The significant increase in ED presentations across Tasmania was raised at the budget estimate hearings on Wednesday, with a 110 per cent increase in all hospitals over the last decade.
Health Minister Sarah Courtney said there was a dramatic trend of an increasing number of Tasmanians with chronic and complex health needs presenting at ED and being admitted to hospital.
"We have seen a strong trajectory of not just increasing presentations across our entire system over the past six or seven years, but a strong increase in the number of people who require admission," she said.
"It is not just people who are turning up, but they are turning up and are sicker and require presentations to the hospital, which is why we are seeing a lot of the challenges that we are now, and it is the very reason why we are doing policy work on our health care future because that trajectory is quite dramatic."
She said in 2009-10 there were just over 29,000 admissions to hospital, which jumped to more than 40,000 in 2018-19.
In other emergency department issues, one budget estimates question raised the fact that Tasmania has a high rate of dead on arrival presentations in the ED and asked why this was the case.
Last year 45 people were announced dead on arrival in Tasmania, compared to 35 in Queensland.
A health department spokesman said this related to a variety of reasons.
"It has traditionally been the case that it is left to the emergency department to do that, but the number of reasons include the time of day, time of the week, availability of medical practitioners to announce life extinct, and the challenge of having onsite access to aged care."
The higher number of Tasmanians living in regional areas also contributed to the rate.