Valley Medical Center has changed its plans to open an emergency department in Covington, opting instead for an urgent and multi-specialty clinic.

A letter addressed to Mayor Margaret Harto from Valley Medical Center CEO Rich Roodman stated that changes to the health care industry precipitated the decision.

“We felt that we can better serve the needs of the community much more effectively by providing an expanded urgent care and multi-specialty clinic, instead of just a smaller emergency room,” the letter stated.

According to the city’s Community Development Director Richard Hart, the city was notified about a two months ago about Valley’s intention to change plans for its new building currently under construction. He stated that most of the changes would occur internally and not affect their permitted based on the original plans.

“Our preliminary view is that it’s going to be no problem (for us),” he said.

Multicare Covington opened its 24,000-square-foot emergency department in early April.

According to Valley spokeswoman Kim Blakeley, the length of time it took to get the project off the ground caused hospital officials to have seconds thoughts.

“When we first started we thought that a 24-7 free standing emergency department would best serve the community out there in Covington and the surrounding area,” she said. “But frankly it took a long time to get permits and over the course of working with the city and get all of those plans and permits in place there was some studies done and the state legislators were questioning how many emergency departments do we really need. Over time started taking a look at it in a different light and what would probably best serve those in the community.”

Blakelely added that Valley was able to change plans because the construction of the new building is still in the preliminary stage, which allowed modifications to the interior layout.

Valley first completed the deal in December 2010 with Ashton Development for the 10 acre site. Valley Medical paid about $5 million for the property in the town center area behind Safeway and Fred Meyer.

Blakeley said the new multi-specialty clinic would include services such as rheumatology, and they hope to add pediatrics as well.

“Right now we don’t have that in concrete yet,” she said. “But that’s what we’re talking about so folks in Covington don’t have to drive all the way to Renton so they get more services in their community.”

The urgent care clinic, she said, would serve the needs of those without life-threatening injuries, which an emergency department would have been able to serve.

“There really is a movement to try to get people to stop going to the emergency department for non-life threatening injuries and illnesses,” she said. “This is kind of in keeping with this new thought. It’s based on a lot of things like health care reform. For us it’s making more sense to do more urgent care.”