A PUBLIC health expert has slammed a leaked government plan for the future of Cairns Base Hospital for not covering the option of relocating to a new hospital site.

The omission has outraged expert in public health management and head of James Cook University’s medical faculty Professor Ian Wronski.

He sees the draft health services plan as a disturbing sign that the State Government intends to push under the carpet the costly option of relocating the cramped hospital.

The long-awaited draft service plan covers the next 10 years.

The long-awaited 10-year draft CBH health service plan, a copy of which was leaked to The Weekend Post yesterday, recommends retaining a "central" city health precinct and upgrading Edmonton into a health hub in the longer term to cope with the growing population.

But Queensland Health's Northern Area Health Service general manager Roxanne Ramsey said the recommendation was a broad reference to the location of community health services only, not acute medical services as provided by the CBH.

These would be contained in the masterplan which was now being prepared based on information in the service plan and was "nowhere near completed", Ms Ramsey said.

But Prof Wronski, who analysed the draft plan with other university academics yesterday, said the service plan should at least mention the hospital relocation option.

"All the signs in the service plan are worrying and the masterplan will be based on this plan," he said.

"They're deeply related."

He said nowhere in the document did it indicate that the preference for retaining health services in the "central" city related to community health services only.

"It doesn't say it rules out emergency services … it talks about service delivery only," Prof Wronski said.

The draft plan also reveals serious areas of need at the hospital, most of which have already been the subject of reports in The Cairns Post.

It said the current policy of running at full occupancy was putting  pressure on inpatient services and causing ramping, access block, elective surgery cancellation and mixed gender bays.

Waiting lists to see specialists were too long, operating theatres were under-used because of a shortage of anaesthetists and the lack of space was resulting in patients being prepped for surgery in the corridors.

The cancer unit was particularly singled out as suffering from space and staff constraints, with late diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients resulting in more invasive and intensive treatments being needed.

There were also surgeon shortages in a wide variety of other areas.

Health Minister Stephen Robertson said he would "not find it strange" if the planners' final recommendation was to further develop on the existing hospital site.

"If they say it makes more sense to continue to expand on the existing site in the foreseeable future, I have no problem with that," he said.

"What we need to understand is that hospital was only redeveloped just over a decade ago so a lot of the assets still have a very long, very useful life.

"So if what they're looking at is the next 10 years, that doesn't rule out that into the longer term there may be a need to move to another site."