Accident and emergency services are being scrapped at the Tyrone County Hospital in Omagh.
Despite pressure from local politicians and campaigners, Health Minister Shaun Woodward has refused to bow to their demands for the retention of the A&E services in the hospital. Instead they will be centralised at the Erne Hospital in Enniskillen, as will major elective surgery.
Announcing the decision following a consultation exercise, Mr Woodward stuck to plans to build a new major £175 million hospital in Enniskillen and a new £95 million hospital in Omagh.
He said life-saving services would continue to be available to the population in and around Omagh. These would include a 24-hour doctor-led urgent care and treatment centre which would be supported by an additional 24-hour emergency ambulance to strengthen existing services.
Tyrone would also continue to receive patients brought in by ambulance and would also be able to help patients who arrived unexpectedly and deteriorated.
"Only very seriously ill medical cases, in particular those likely to require intensive care services, would not come to Omagh," Mr Woodward said.
Emergency and major elective care surgery would be transferred to the Erne in the first few months of 2006, he added, and work on the two new hospitals would begin in 2007.
In September a report from the Royal Colleges of Surgeons branded hospital services in the southwest of Northern Ireland "unsafe and unsustainable". - (PA)