Before Lily Gubbay's husband died in palliative care in May, she noticed gaps in his care.
"We had to wait for answers to our questions, for doctors to get back to us," she said.
"And there were days in between where we just didn't know what was going on."
Today, she's concerned about another gap - worth $150 million and affecting patients soon to be in her husband's shoes.
While NSW Health is pumping record funding into palliative care, it is $150 million short of the sum the previous government promised hospitals last December.
The coalition's four-year funding commitment was to help pay for an extra 600 palliative care doctors, nurses and health staff.
But Labor says $150 million of the $743 million budget was redirected within health, in part to make permanent nearly 1200 temporary nurses.
"I plead to the minister and the premier to give us that funding back so we can look after our future generations," Ms Gubbay told reporters on Thursday.
Retired physician Philip Lee said few services met Palliative Care Australia standards because of a lack of funding.
"When the announcement came last year ... there was absolute joy in the palliative care community because we've struggled to get funding for so many years," he said.
"Now, with the introduction of voluntary assisted dying (in late November), we're going to have more patients whose palliative care needs are not met, who will be suffering, which may lead to more referrals to voluntary assisted dying."
Opposition health spokesman Matt Kean said people would die in pain because of the cuts and $150 million was a "drop in the ocean" from the state's budget.
But Health Minister Ryan Park rejected opposition MPs' criticism when grilled over the changes in NSW budget estimates on Thursday.
He said his advice was that specific claims of cuts to palliative care services in Bulli, Orange, and western and northern Sydney were untrue.
"We are increasing the funding by about 6.8 per cent, we're also boosting front line staff ... and infrastructure across regional and rural NSW."
NSW Health secretary Susan Pearce reiterated there was no reduction in palliative care services, saying 70 new positions were added by the end of August.
Earlier, Mr Park claimed success in cutting planned surgery waiting lists.
After exploding 15-fold in recent years, mainly due to widespread surgery suspensions during the COVID-19 pandemic, a task force has halved how many people are overdue for planned surgery in NSW.
The team of experts found some common or high-volume procedures, such as hernia repair, gall-bladder removal and surgeries on sinuses, were unnecessarily undertaken with a one-night stay by default.
Clinicians still had the option to keep patients in overnight if required, but it was no longer the standard policy.
The Surgical Care Taskforce pared back the waiting list to 7010 people by September, down from 14,067 in March.
The formation of the task force was one of Mr Park's first decisions as health minister in March.
Some knee and hip surgeries may be the next to go to same-day procedures.
