THIS is the anguished face of Queensland's health system.

A woman waits with her elderly dad in an ambulance in a car park because he can't be admitted to the overflowing emergency department.

At least five other patients wait in other ambulances.

A year after the health inquiry and just a day after Premier Peter Beattie denied there was a crisis in the health system, Cairns Base Hospital yesterday was a scene of agony.

As politicians from all sides of politics pledge to fix the problems in health, 70-year-old Ken Freckelton waited nearly two hours to be admitted to the hospital suffering chest pains.

His worried daughter Emma Freckelton-Bowden watched helplessly as paramedics were told there were no spare beds.

After finally being admitted he was returned to the ambulance because there were no spare doctors.

"Nobody would come and talk to us to tell us what was happening. They were talking to the paramedics telling them there were no beds," Ms Freckelton-Bowden said.

The gridlock was revealed as Coalition deputy leader Bruce Flegg stood outside the hospital unveiling a plan to expand cardiac services.

Dr Flegg said the situation was a "disgrace" and left just after his press conference as media crews spoke to distraught relatives.

Cairns Health Service District Acting Manager Brett Grosser blamed the situation on an influx of patients needing beds with cardiac-monitoring equipment.

"(That) meant some patients had to wait in the ambulances until these monitored beds became available," Mr Grosser said.

He said this week had been particularly busy for the hospital's Emergency Department (ED).

"We can't predict when ambulances will need to wait," he said.

A spokesman for the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union, which includes ambulance officers, said backlogs at the hospital potentially led to delays in responding to other cases.

Australian Medical Association Queensland president Zelle Hodge said the hospital's emergency department was not big enough and had too few beds to cope with the demand.

She said the problem of bed numbers in Queensland hospitals was compounded in the mid-1990s under the then Goss Government when Mr Beattie was Health Minister.

Dr Hodge said instead of increasing bed numbers or maintaining them, they were cut.

"The health economists at the time were saying: 'You're not going to need as many hospital beds because basically people are going to be in for a shorter stay'," she said.

"But the doctors were saying: 'People are getting older, the population is getting bigger. Even though people are in for a shorter time, you're still going to need those bed numbers'."

Dr Hodge said she was at a meeting last year when the Premier admitted he had thought those doctors were "empire building" and realised now he was wrong not to trust them.