Minister fires back at NSW hospital claims

"Every health system is working under pressure right across the world," the minister told a budget estimates hearing on Thursday.

Mr Hazzard recently spoke with another emergency specialist who described some doctors triaging outside the hospital in the ambulance.

"There are different ways of doing things," he said.

"When I've met with all of the other Labor, and one Liberal minister now, around the country, they all acknowledge that NSW is the most outstanding and leading in regard to the issue that you're raising."

Mr Hazzard insisted it was easy to find aggrieved doctors within the NSW health system because of its sheer size.

"You can always, in a system as big as NSW, pretend that it's a disaster," he said.

"No, it's not. It is absolutely not. It's actually doing extraordinarily well."

One issue affecting overcrowding in NSW hospitals was a large number of people waiting to be categorised by the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the minister said.

A significant number of aged care patients were also in NSW hospitals.

That number was close to 600 on Wednesday, equivalent to the number of beds in Sydney's St George Hospital.

Last month, emergency doctors Pramod Chandru and James Tadros told the inquiry of their frustrations working in public hospitals in western Sydney.

Dr Tadros read a text exchange between him and his colleague that described the system as "basically third world".

They were discussing an 88-year-old woman with terminal cancer who was left for 12 hours in an ED before getting a bed.

Mr Hazzard has been the state's health minister for the past six years, and steered NSW through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 71-year-old ended speculation about his future on Monday, announcing he will leave politics at the election.

He is the 12th NSW coalition MP to exit at the March poll, leaving Premier Dominic Perrottet with a growing list of spots to fill.