Australian Paramedics Association Darren Rudd says services affected by long wait times at busy Wagga Base Hospital

Australian Paramedics Association Wagga representative Darren Rudd said issues with "patient flow" at the hospital and an increase in emergency presentations were affecting services.

"It means that we're not able to respond to emergency calls in the community which is obviously the primary role of Ambulance NSW," Mr Rudd said.

"And that has some follow-on effects. What ends up happening is that a lot of the branch communities, the smaller towns around the area like Lockhart, Junee, Coolamon, their staff end up being drawn into Wagga to attend to casualty cases leaving those communities uncovered and unprotected."

Paramedics have to stay with patients until they are taken into emergency.

Mr Rudd said ambulances having to wait a long time "put the community at risk" and was an ongoing issue, which had become more noticeable in the past fortnight with an increased workload putting "extra strain" on the ED.

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"Since we've had the new hospital [redevelopment in 2016] I'd say it wasn't necessarily about not enough beds, but flow and workload related. So basically just too many patients coming in at once," he said.

"There certainly would have been emergency responses [in the past two weeks] that haven't been able to be attended by normal local paramedic crews and been attended by crews from out of town or had delayed responses."

Mr Rudd said in the past two weeks paramedics had been kept waiting with some patients for "more than two hours".

Between November 18 and December 4, the average number of patients admitted to hospital from Wagga Base's ED each day jumped by more than 27 per cent from the same period in 2019, partly because of an increase in asthma and heat-related illnesses.

On average, 136 patients presented to the ED every day with 37 admitted to hospital, compared to 28 for the same fortnight last year.

In response to these concerns, Wagga Base Hospital general manager Troy Trgetaric said patients were treated in accordance with triage targets which were met or exceeded in all categories except Triage 3, which was "very close".

Triage category three patients are those who need to receive treatment within 30 minutes for a "potentially life-threatening condition" like heavy bleeding or major fractures.

"Patients arriving by ambulance have been transferred from the ambulance stretcher to an ED bed in a time that is better than the expected performance level," Mr Trgetaric said.

"The Paramedics Association has not contacted the hospital about any concerns."