A man suffering from dementia and reliant on a walking frame has been found nearly 200km from a Hobart nursing home after going missing.
The 67-year-old man, diagnosed with severe dementia, has been unable to tell police why he walked out of the St Anns home wearing slippers in wet weather and caught a bus to Launceston.
Locals found the confused man wandering a South Launceston street, to the relief of police who had concentrated their search around the home after hed gone missing at about midday on Sunday.
Because of his walking frame our focus was making sure he wasnt somewhere in the complex, and then we focused on about a 500m radius, police inspector Colin Riley told AAP.
With dementia youre more likely to have just stumbled into someones yard and fallen over or something like that.
The search was made more urgent by the possibility that the man could have collapsed because hed missed his scheduled dose of insulin, Inspector Riley said.
A bus ticket was found in one of his pockets and relatives told police he had lived in Launceston 20 years ago, but nowhere near the street where he was found.
He didnt know where he was and he didnt know how he got there, Riley said.
The man was taken to Launceston General Hospital before being transported back to Hobart.
Police have thanked the public for their help.
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Slipper clad dementia sufferer far from home
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