16/10/2025
AMA Victoria statement on cohealth service closures
cohealth has announced it will close its Collingwood site and end general practice services at its Fitzroy and Kensington centres by December 2025. These closures will leave thousands of vulnerable Victorians without access to the trusted doctors who have cared for them for years.
cohealth has attributed its decision to chronic underfunding and to the limits of Medicare’s consultation structure, which fails to reflect the time and complexity involved in caring for people with multiple social and medical needs. Those pressures are real, reflecting shared responsibility between governments: the Commonwealth has not modernised Medicare to support complex, multidisciplinary care, and the Victorian Government has underinvested in the infrastructure and funding needed to sustain the community health system. These long-term policy failures have placed services like cohealth under increasing strain- but they do not excuse the way these closures have been managed, or the impact they will have on patients and staff.
These closures have been announced with little notice, leaving patients with few options for ongoing care. Many will inevitably turn to already overstretched hospital emergency departments, adding to the strain on the public system. But for others- those unable to navigate or access mainstream care, such as people facing language or cultural barriers- there may be nowhere to go. They will lose the wraparound support that community health provides, where GPs, nurses and allied health professionals work together under one roof to address both medical and social needs.
AMA Victoria has spoken with the Victorian Government and will continue to engage to ensure the implications of these closures are fully understood and appropriately addressed. Our Workplace Relations team has already met with impacted cohealth staff and is supporting affected members. We are working to understand immediate needs and to advocate for fair treatment, proper transition arrangements, and continuity of patient care.
Many of the doctors affected already earn far less than they could in private practice or the public system. They choose to work in community health out of commitment to vulnerable patients. But goodwill alone cannot keep these services going.
As governments at both levels debate where the fault lies, vulnerable Victorians risk being left without the care they need. Community health is an essential part of our healthcare system and must be funded sustainably. The immediate priority must be ensuring continuity of care and support for affected patients and clinicians, alongside a longer-term commitment to rebuild a viable, well-funded community health system.
![Australian Medical Association Victoria president Dr Simon Judkins said the decision to axe [cohealth] services in Colli...](https://img3.findhealthclinics.com/950/238/1392989589502381.jpg)
