Dr Michael Holland from the One New Eurobodalla (ONE) Hospital advocacy group and Unions Shoalhaven secretary Patricia David gave evidence to the inquiry into health outcomes and access to health and hospital services in rural, regional and remote NSW.

They testified to a dangerous shortage in services, a system relying on overstretched doctors and a lack of resources causing failures in best practice.

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Dr Holland is the only obstetrician in the Eurobodalla Shire, a position he has held for the past 19 years, and provides services for women from Narooma to Ulladulla.

He revealed a routine roster for health professionals in the area was 96 hours on call continuously, and every one to two months it could be as much as 264 hours on call continuously.

"It's a perennial problem for many years that we have raised, and the crisis has arisen recently where well- trained GP visiting medical officers (VMOs) are no longer present on a roster to assist," he said.

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When asked if the government's election promise to provide "right care, right place, right time" health services across NSW had been kept, Ms David said the Shoalhaven had been "woefully left behind".

"If we look at what has occurred at the Shoalhaven hospital in the past 10-year period, there's been the addition of a good multi-story carpark and upgrades to the emergency department (ED) and cancer ward but the overall expansion to clinical services has been woefully left behind," she said.

"People have to travel to Wollongong to get broken limbs set and the lack of GPs puts pressure on our ED.

"We are not coping. It's so important for people to get emergency care in a best practice time but at the moment it's not happening."

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Eurobodalla Shire resident and ONE advocate Catherine Hurst shared her harrowing experience having to travel far distances to access cancer treatment.

"Towards the end of my treatment it became difficult for me to travel to and from Sydney, I worried whether I would be able to sit on a bus for hours with the side effects," she said.

"Having somewhere in your region, and being able to access treatment closer to home would make all the difference."

Dr Holland said the NSW government failed to apply for federal government funding made available to the region for a local radiation therapy service in 2019.

"A tender was put in to provide bulk-billed services for radiation and oncology using funding promised from the federal government," he said,

"But it was decided by the state government the population base here was inadequate to support the service, with an estimated need of a population of 400,000.

"This is despite radiation services being provided to equivalent or smaller populations than the Eurobodalla Shire including Mt Gambier, Geraldton and Gladstone interstate."

"There was a private provider willing to oversee these services here but it wasn't followed up by state government."

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Dr Holland's contract is due to end in 21 months and he was concerned there was no planning being done to attract the next generation of doctors to the region.

"Specialists don't grow on trees, NSW Health needs to have a succession plan," he said.

"Most rural and regional doctors find more satisfaction than their metro colleagues but you can't attract people with inadequate bed numbers, inadequate numbers of nurses and midwives and inadequate resources.

"The South Coast is a beautiful part of the world, but you can feel like you're in a beautiful jail if you're on call 24/7 because of a lack of staffing."