A 24-hour urgent care centre for patients needing to see a GP when their doctor's surgery is shut is to close from midnight to 8am.
Managers said with an average of 10 patients each night it was not worth keeping the centre at Leicester Royal Infirmary open overnight.
Instead, a GP and senior nurse will be based in A&E from Monday, April 11.
Professor Aly Rashid, medical director at the primary care trusts NHS Leicester City and NHS Leicestershire County and Rutland, said: "By putting other care arrangements in place for people needing the service between these hours we can make better use of our resources."
He said the changes were also part of a rethink on emergency care which could, in the long-term, see all patients going through the infirmary's accident and emergency department and then channelled to the right doctor according to the severity of their illness.
Kim Wilding, clinical lead for urgent care in the city, said: "There will be no cuts to local services, we are just moving one part of our service to a different location at the emergency department.
"PCT resources will be saved by moving any staff based at the urgent care centre."
Managers said the decision was nothing to do with management of the centre being handed over to the George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust.
It was appointed as caretaker for the centre for a year by the constortium of GPs who are due to run local health services by 2013.
Professsor Azhar Farooqi, interim chairman of the city GP consortium, said: "We're keen to explore a range of solutions for the urgent care centre in the medium term which is why we supported a caretaker arrangement for the next 12 months. During this period the consortia will be talking about the future of urgent care which will include discussions between primary care and Leicester's hospitals."
Derbyshire Community Health Services was considering taking on the centre but pulled out in early March – leaving three weeks to find someone else to run the services in order to meet a Government deadline of April 1.
Bosses at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust said they were "disappointed" at not being given a chance to take on the running of the centre.
In a note to staff, trust chief executive Malcolm Lowe-Lauri said: "While appreciating the tight time scale it is very disappointing we were not asked to engage in discussions about the hosting of the urgent care centre.
"I know many of you who have committed so much time and energy to the plans to transform urgent care in Leicester will be disappointed by this."
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