Labor questions where $580m Launceston General Hospital (LGH) funding has gone

The hospital was promised a precinct redevelopment in Premier Jeremy Rockliff's 2021 election campaign and a master plan was completed last year with a proposed timeline over 10 years.

Stage two of the three part proposed redevelopment was planned for completion by 2024 and was to include a purpose-built mental health precinct, however, construction has yet to begin.

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The $580 million investment in the LGH was aimed at improving the sites facilities and increasing its capacity to meet future service demand.

Premier Rockliff had previously said that several of the redevelopments key projects are already operational and the next stages of the precinct upgrade would be delivered over the life of the master plan to expand and modernise facilities at the LGH.

But Tasmanian Labor leader Rebecca White said the state Liberal government's stage two simply hadn't happened and that the only sight of it in the state budget was a $50 million allocation.

"The other thing they promised to do was to go to Canberra and to ask for money for this hospital to be upgraded," she said.

"They failed to do that: Jeremy Rockliff has gone to Canberra and instead asked for money to build a stadium in Hobart."

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It comes in a week when Launceston General Hospital has been scrutinised by both the Shadow Minister for Health Anita Dow and The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation for being "literally held together with sticky tape."

"We've had terrible health situations here with babies dying in the emergency department because we've had to wait too long for care in our health centre," Ms White said.

Labor's health spokeswoman Anita Dow said the LGH has the worst bed block in the country.

"Just 40 per cent of patients who present here at the Launceston General Hospital Emergency Departments are seen within four hours," Ms Dow said.

She said the problem was only exacerbated by the "considerably underutilised" regional and district hospitals that "could be providing more services".

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However, a Tasmanian government spokesperson said Labor was "deliberately misleading" in their comments and that stage two of the project was not missing from the budget - it had been committed in the previous year's.

"The 10-year implementation plan is on track, including the announcement of $15 million earlier this week for a new helipad," they said.

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