The assessment of the ED was made by one of Tasmania's top doctors, and follows the death of a woman in her 70s who died after waiting nine hours for a bed.

Speaking outside the LGH in March, Australian Medical Association Tasmania chairman Dr Glenn Richardson warned the ED was in crisis.

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At the time, Dr Richardson said the LGH was a "great little hospital" but was unable to move patients through, and was 10 years away from where it needed to be.

Nearly six months on, Dr Richardson said Tasmania's ageing population, combined with chronic disease had resulted in people becoming "frequent fliers" into EDs and hospitals.

"We haven't prepared really well," he said.

"Governments, Liberal and Labor, state and federal, have for the last 20-30 years been relentlessly trying to reduce the costs in health by all sorts of methods, including reducing the number of beds in hospitals, and effectively the LGH is two wards short of where it needs to be, which is about 50 beds."

He said Tasmania was the "canary in the mine".

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"We're starting to fail, at the end of the day, and so is every public hospital in Australia. It's just we're the front of the pack due to our much older population."

"The issue is [staff] are absolutely overwhelmed with large numbers of very, very sick people, and so eventually, what happens is people start to tire, fatigue, burnout, and they start to make errors, and staff leave."

Data from the Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing found only 63 per cent of patients presenting at the LGH ED received treatment within the clinically recommended timeframe. That number dropped to 41 per cent for patients requiring urgent care.

Premier Jeremy Rockliff said all states and territories were experiencing increased challenges to managing patient flow, and current hospital funding had not kept pace with rising costs of service delivery.

"This is why states and territories - including Tasmania - have consistently advocated for a more equitable funding arrangement, including a 50/50 funding split with the Australian Government," he said.

Mr Rockliff has wrote to federal health minister Mark Butler outlining the health priorities for Tasmania.

The pressure being felt at the LGH ED has had flow-on effects for primary care providers in the North.

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Newstead Medical practice partner and GP, Dr Toby Gardner, who runs the Newstead Urgent Care Clinic, said he was seeing a rise in demand with the clinic a second option for low acuity emergency patients.

"We've started to try and help relieve some of the pressure in urgent care as opposed to patients presenting to ED for things that could be managed by us," he said.

"We had a really busy weekend. On Saturday and Sunday, we saw upwards of 40 people a day through urgent care"

Dr Gardner said the root cause of the problem was the number of people who needed care did not match the services that were available.

"So there's just a lot of sick people around and not a lot of after hours services to serve them," he said.

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