A day after the Horvath report recommended an overhaul of the local health services coordination facilities, the Abbott government has announced they will be scrapped.
Health Minister Peter Dutton said the 61 Medicare Locals would be replaced by a smaller number of primary health networks.
The new bodies will be more closely aligned with state and territory health networks, and have stronger links to GPs.
"They will be more locally relevant, accountable and responsive," Mr Dutton said in a statement.
The decision to replace the Medicare Locals will be portrayed as a broken promise by Labor, after the coalition initially pledged to not to shut any of the facilities, before Prime Minister Tony Abbott later said he could not guarantee they would stay exactly the same.
Instead it commissioned a review of Medicare Locals by Professor John Horvath, whose scathing report found they had limited success, and had only disempowered local doctors.
Mr Dutton said the new health networks would be established following a tender process later this year, and would begin operating in July 2015.
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