The purpose of the Pebble Project is to create a ripple effect in the community by sharing researched and documented examples of healthcare facilities that have used evidence-based design to improve the healing environment, quality of care and financial performance of the institution.

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By incorporating evidence-based design into their facilities, Pebble Partners have seen reduced staff turnover, increases in patient satisfaction, reduced patient falls, fewer hospital acquired infections, decreases in patient transfers, and more.

Sacred Heart will study how its new design features at the RiverBend campus are providing caregivers with more time at the bedside. We will also measure rates of medication errors and hospital-acquired infections, length of stay, staff retention, patient satisfaction and employee satisfaction to ensure the facility is continually improving. 

Our current efforts as a Pebble Partner have already produced documented results and affected change in the design of Sacred Heart at RiverBend. The majority of the private patient rooms at Sacred Heart at RiverBend will be equipped with patient lifts due to research performed at Sacred Heart’s existing hospital campus in Eugene. After examining data from the intensive care and neurology units at that facility -where there are lifts in each room-the team found that staff injuries from patient handling were almost eliminated. The staff greatly appreciated this new tool and Sacred Heart saw a cost savings on treating employee injuries, yielding a return on investment within two years. Installing lifts in patient rooms has caught on with other hospitals in the country that have followed Sacred Heart’s lead, particularly those involved with the Pebble Project. 

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