Hospital design influences care delivery processes, patient experience, and safety. At a tertiary care academic medical center, a transdisciplinary team including ergonomists is developing future hospital plans through an Innovation Design Unit (IDU). This 17-bed IDU recently opened to medical surgical patients to evaluate the innovative built environment. Staff indicated visibility to the patient and placing high acuity patients close to the nurse station were important. Location of the nursing station and patient room placement has been studied to determine the impact on workflow and nursing assignments; however, acuity and room placement is understudied. In this analysis, the team compared patient room placement and acuity data for 7.5 weeks on the IDU and one traditional medical surgical unit to determine if placement is related to acuity. The number of patients placed in each room ranged from 1 to 18 (450 room placements total across all 57 rooms). Patient acuity ranged from 45.6-321.6 with mean(SD) of 99.1 (34.1) for IDU and 104.7 (42.6) for traditional. Data were analyzed using a Kruskal Wallis test for room or unit differences in acuity (alpha=0.05). There were no statistically significant differences in the acuity scores for patients by room or by unit type. This initial investigation indicates rooming patients based on acuity is not a current consistent practice. Patient placement process, acuity and the physical layout of the hospital are critical interactions in need of further investigation to ensure human systems integration and the application of human factors principles to design for effective care delivery.