Health minister Edwina Hart took expert advice and finally concluded that sending North Wales patients for neurosurgery to Cardiff or Swansea rather than Liverpool was a non-starter.
As this blog recorded, the outpouring of dissent from the region was almost without precedent even though with hindsight, the minister is adamant that it was never her intention to force emergency or elective patients on such an onerous trek down the A470.
I suspect though that the issue of 'all-Wales' services in the NHS may not have fully gone away.
Cross border services, especially in the NHS, remain a highly sensitive political area, especially given the development of different methods of working either side of Offa's Dyke since devolution.
Mrs Hart is set against the internal market mechanisms of the recent past and in Wales there are no foundation hospitals as there are in England.
The financial relationship between these two philosophies could become increasingly strained especially if a future Conservative Government at Westminster seeks to extend the NHS' affair with the private sector.
Meanwhile, previously enraged patients groups will be delighted by today's announcement after the review by eminent independent neurosurgeon Mr James Steer.
Mrs Hart said: "It was important to stop all this uncertainty. I never thought I would move people from North to South Wales for neurosurgery.
"I was concerned about Parkinson's and Multiple Sclerosis people and the distance they had to travel for services.
This is now the end of the matter so far as North Wales is concerned, it's about new service provision."
The questions remain about sustaining neurosurgical services in both Cardiff and Swansea, where the whole problem arose in the first place amid a public campaign to keep the Swansea centre.
The minister promises a full statement by the autumn.
