A dementia home resident who died after being diagnosed with a perforated bowel waited six hours for an ambulance while distressed and in increasing pain.
The 82-year-old woman's story is among dozens of submissions to a parliamentary inquiry into ambulance ramping in Tasmania.
Ramping occurs when ambulances are unable to transfer patients to emergency departments because of hospital capacity issues.
An ambulance was called for the woman around 8pm on March 24 after she experienced stomach pains.
The woman's daughter, who wrote the submission, said an ambulance arrived at almost 2am.
"In those six hours, my mum's pain became worse," she wrote.
"She could not keep anything down, and so had not had any kind of pain relief. She was very distressed."
The woman was taken to a private hospital in Hobart where she was diagnosed with a perforated bowel. She died five days later.
"My mum wasn't one of the patients stuck in emergency for hours and hours before ambulance staff could hand her over to hospital staff," the submission reads.
"However, I do believe she was still a 'victim' of ambulance ramping.
"If the system were better, and patients able to be handed over more quickly, mum would not have had to wait ... confused and scared and in increasing pain."
The inquiry, set up last month, will examine the impact of transfer delays on patient care and what can be done to alleviate ramping.
In another submission, a 93-year-old woman who fractured her pelvis said she waited three hours for an ambulance and spent seven hours ramped at the Royal Hobart Hospital (RHH).
Data released last month showed half of all ambulance patients waited more than 74 minutes at the RHH in 2021/22 and 84 minutes at the Launceston General Hospital (LGH).
An emergency nurse who has worked at the LGH for more than 15 years said the situation had never been as bad.
"l am hearing more stories of elderly patients not being attended to for hours in the community because they cannot get an ambulance after a fall," she said.
"I have had several people say they were on the ground at home for three to five hours waiting for an ambulance.
"I have seen patients die from failing to receive rapid care."
Acting director of the RHH emergency department Paul Scott said daily patient inflow into the hospital system exceeded outflow.
He said an emergency department expansion at the RHH, slated for completion in 2026, would help but an "aggressive" recruitment campaign was needed.
"The morale of the staff is severely damaged by chronic overcrowding and under-resourcing," Dr Scott said in a submission.
"A large component of the workforce wishes to only work part time due to the deleterious impact (of) fulltime work in the hospital environment."
Dr Scott said providing more residential aged care homes and sub-acute community support would help reduce "bed block" in the longer term.
Health Minister Guy Barnett in August welcomed the inquiry and said the state government was working to address ramping issues.
Greens MP Vica Bayley, whose party called for the inquiry, said the stories were only the tip of the iceberg with an average 2000 people experiencing ramping each month.
