Funding led to appendix delay: opposition LACK of hospital funding resulted in a young girl with appendicitis lying for hours on the floor of a Sydney emergency waiting room, the NSW opposition says. Demi Ellul, 17, spent nine hours on the floor of Campbelltown Hospital's emergency department on Monday with only a blanket, which her mother says was "thrown" to her three hours after she asked for one. Opposition Leader John Robertson said the government had taken $3 billion out of the state's health budget and only 24 of the hospital's 36 paediatric emergency beds were open at the time. "People die if an appendix bursts," he told reporters on Thursday. It is a very serious matter. And someone like this was left for nine hours simply because beds were closed. Health Minister Jillian Skinner joined hospital staff in apologising to Demi and her family and said the incident would be investigated. "Clearly I think this was not the best possible treatment which is why I apologise to the family," she told reporters on Thursday. However she denied that beds at the hospital were closed. "My advice is that all of the beds are open, that there's been an increased budget ... and that we are in fact treating more patients right through the hospital," Ms Skinner said. When contacted by AAP for clarification on the conflicting claims about bed numbers, a NSW Health spokeswoman told AAP the hospital had advised her all beds were open. The Clinical Excellence Commission and the health department's director general would determine what led to the incident, Ms Skinner said. Demi's mother told the Daily Telegraph she was forced to take her daughter home without treatment after nine hours but returned the following morning and the teenager was given morphine for extreme pain. The husband of the triage nurse who provided the blanket for Demi said there were more urgent cases that night including two patients who needed resuscitation. "This girl would have been given painkillers and so on and so forth - she's not just put out there in the waiting room," he told Southern Cross Austereo radio. It's her choice to lay on the floor. But he criticised the government for not upgrading the hospital, which had become too small to cater for demand in the growing local area.