FH: One commenter on FierceHealthcare said, "A healthcare facility is not Disneyland...We are setting ourselves up for dissatisfaction, as we can never be a hotel or Disneyland." Because people are not on vacation and presumably sick, are hospitals and health systems already unfairly dealing with a dissatisfied group?

Jordan: I think to some degree, you are. These are folks who didn't buy a ticket, and [they think] it's going to be expensive and not a lot of fun.

We all go into different experiences with stereotypes. For example, one of ours is that Disneyworld is crowded, it's hot, and there are long lines. Where you have negative stereotypes, we try to mitigate those to the [largest] degree possible. If it's hot, you put misters in or create shade. If there's a long line, we created a fast path of a virtual waiting line. You try to address that wherever you can, but at the end of the day, it's [still] Florida. It's very hot. We try to make that experience as pleasant as we can.

There's always going to be positive stereotypes too, and where we have those--that you come and you make memories with your family--we try to accentuate those. And we invite our partners in healthcare to do so also. When you have a negative stereotype like "it's going to be expensive" or "it's going to hurt" and "I'm not going to have any control over the experience," you try to minimize to the degree possible, but then you try to also elevate those things they're going to be positive about and that there'll be a relief when the procedure is over. Sometimes, it's a matter of just giving people information. You go to the hospital, and you hold your breath until the bill comes. Why do we live that way where you're literally holding your breath not knowing how much this is going to cost? Because-we've-always-done-it-that-way doesn't mean that's what'll accomplish [customer satisfaction].

As consumers become more sophisticated about how services are delivered around the experience, they're going to demand more and more choice.

FH: What are hospitals and healthcare systems doing wrong that they could work on?

Jordan: It probably starts with getting the associates, the employees, and the providers--the people who are responsible for the experience--bringing all the people together around a common purpose. In healthcare, you would think that's a no-brainer. Everyone in healthcare knows what the purpose is; it's to help this person feel better. In healthcare, too often, it's very task-oriented. Everyone has their task to do. I'm a speech therapist, and you come to me, and I take care of you from the neck up, and when you go to PT, they'll take care of you from your waist to your neck, and etc. For the patient, it becomes very fragmented because their care becomes very fragmented.

At Disney, we have a common purpose, and we each have tasks. At Disney World Resort, there are over 2,000 different roles, or what you might call job descriptions. Each of those [descriptions] have tasks associated with them, but we all have a singular common purpose, and the common purpose for us will always trump and be more important than our task. So at any point in my day and I'm delivering on my task, if I have an opportunity to deliver on the common purpose, I do that. And I'm rewarded for that intrinsically because it makes me feel good. The more I do that, the more I want to do that. Healthcare institutions can be a better place to work; it can be a better place to be cared for by simply coming back to the purpose, "why did we get into this in the first place?"

I talk to providers all the time, who might say, "I went to school to become a respiratory therapist." Twelve years later, you're doing the same thing, how do you connect back to that? You come back and connect with that around the purpose, not the task. The task hasn't changed in 12 years.

We see this all too often in healthcare, sometimes, people almost create this defensive mechanism around them to protect themselves from the daily sensitivities of what they're doing because it can be so personal. When organizations can take care of their employees, it bodes well for employers to keep that experience fresh for the patient.

FH: How can organizations take care of their employees? Do you mean with salary?

Jordan: Salary is really a small piece because that's only going to go so far. The real piece is how employees are engaged. Do they really have a say-so in how healthcare gets delivered? How can we ensure the employees have access to whatever it is they need to work in terms of the resources? We demand productivity, but what are we doing to reduce distractions, fewer hassles, in the employee's experience that get in the way of them being productive?

Here at the Walt Disney World Resort, we have mobile mammograms for female cast members. It's important to us; it's part of our culture to take care of our cast members.

Appearance is one of the things that is important to us. So instead of just saying, "you have to have this kind of haircut," we will provide you that haircut and subsidize the cost for that, and you can get it cut here on property so it saves you time and saves you money associated with that.

We provide the costumes for our costumed cast members.

We have a wellness center available here, staffed with physicians and nurses so you can get your healthcare here. My primary physician's office is behind Epcot.

And child care is available for 365 days a year because we work when other people play.

Really understanding what your cast members need and then being able to address that goes a long way to helping them understand that you really do recognize that, and then they are more likely to deliver for you.

FH: What are hospitals doing right in terms of the patient experience?

Jordan: There's so much they are doing right. When hospitals look at their scores online, I hear hospitals say that the scores being reported are just not [their] experience. Those patient interactions that you get directly back from your patients or consumers, you can't discount that.

Everyone understands to some degree that when you respond to a questionnaire or a survey, sometimes it's [a matter] of the way the questions are built, and sometimes it's about the amount of time since the experience and when you're being asked that.

What are hospitals doing right? What are providers doing right? For the most part, most healthcare organizations are hiring the right type of people, people who genuinely want to be part of caring for others. Sometimes though, after we hire someone, we don't do as good a job taking care of them and nurturing that notion they had when they joined us. They want to contribute. "Don't just hire my hands." "How can I hire your heart?" This isn't about compliance. Today, healthcare is very much compliance-oriented. What we're about is commitment.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.