FH: What do customers look for in an experience?

Jordan: As healthcare providers, we need to take off the table the notion that consumers are going to assume the quality of the product; [what they will assume is the] delivery of that product.

As a patient, I might not know that [hospitals are] using the best equipment or that my medical record is accurate or that there is a better, more relevant drug to address my issue; I don't know any of those things as a healthcare consumer. But what I do know is how I felt about the experience: where I parked, how long I waited, my perception of how I was treated in the waiting room, how long I sat in the exam room, how comfortable the furniture was, how private I thought my information was being kept. All of that contributes to my experience around that visit. While I might not understand the clinical aspect of the care being designed and delivered for me, I can absolutely tell you how I feel about the experience.

FH: Some providers would argue patients should be caring more about the clinical aspect and that satisfaction scores aren't based on the right measures. How would you respond?

Jordan: I guess we all wish that were true, those of us who work in healthcare and support the clinical outcome in being primary; I certainly support that. I guess we have to live where the patient is. It's not a matter of wishing it were different. It's a matter of approaching the patient where she is and what's in front of her. And what's in front of her is her experience. What's behind that, she doesn't really have an appreciation for.

FH: How important is customer satisfaction?

Jordan: What's new in healthcare is the HCAHPS scores that the government is collecting is now mandatorily collected. As institutions begin collecting and reporting those scores mandatorily, that information will be used to develop and determine up to 30 percent of their reimbursement, going forward beginning in 2013.

The patient experience is going to become much, much more important because there's going to be some accountability for the providers, particularly in acute care; hospital providers will pay to that. For providers that aren't held to HCAHPS, other types of healthcare providers continue to come to us, particularly around the physician office experience. Just like it is for us at Disney, the last link in the chain of excellence is the loyalty and financial results.

FH: How do you achieve loyalty and financial results?

Jordan: What we live and die by here is your intent to return to us or your intent to recommend us. The same is true for the provider in the healthcare field. It's very important they be able to sustain their referral sources. Now, more and more, it has less to do with the physician's recommendation or the location of the provider, and more and more to do with experience as a part of the decision-making that we make as consumers of healthcare.

The chain of excellence for us starts with leadership, moves into how you take care of your people, how your people then take care of your guests. And the loyalty and the financial results, for us, is not the goal, but rather it's the reward for doing something else really well, and that's that guest experience.

FH: Some skeptics say that hospitals should seek customer service (patients) advice from their peers, meaning other hospitals rather than other industries such as Disney. How would you respond?

Jordan: This is the elephant in the living room. One of the first things we do when we are working with an organization, whether they're an intact group or an open enrollment group, we talk about the elephant in the living room. Why Disney? You're healthcare. People aren't exactly signing up for tickets to go to the hospital. What do we have to offer?

When you consider what our practice looks like--not our core business, but our daily practice--some of the first pieces of your experience around the healthcare experience is parking. We park thousands and thousands of people every day. When you park your car at Walt Disney World Resort, it's an almost invisible experience for you. We learned in 1955 when Walt Disney opened up Disney Land how to speed parking automobiles in a way that's very efficient, in a way that's very safe and respects what you're here for. You didn't come here to park your car. You came here to do something else so we want that to be an almost invisible experience for you. It's important that your experience be seamless.

Another similarity between what we're doing and what happens in healthcare every day is we have over 50,000 hotel rooms in the Walt Disney World Resort. We have one resort here that has 5,400 guest rooms. We check in 20,000 people into these resorts routinely. Hospitals do a lot of checking in and a lot of checking out, and we have a lot of experience with that in making that experience efficient but also personal.

One of the tenets that we work diligently toward with Parks and Resorts at the Walt Disney Company is the idea of treating everyone individually. Our guests want to be treated with respect, and they want their children to be respected, and the cast members that they're working with to be knowledgeable, all of those things are important.

Other mundane things that people don't think about: We have a lot of laundry. We run our own three commercial laundries. Housekeeping: if you could take that housekeeper that's normally an invisible entity and somehow create interaction and have the person contribute to your experience, that's a huge win for you. At Disney, our housekeepers are part of the experience. They will leave towel animals and other surprises for children in the rooms; they will engage guests. The same could be true in the healthcare environment. Frequently, someone in the healthcare environment may not have visitors or not until late in the evening, but that housekeeper can be a touch point for them.

Why healthcare and why Disney? At Parks and Resorts at the Walt Disney Company, particularly here at the Walt Disney World Resort, we are guest-facing all the time. We're in front of our guests and engaging them all the time, just like you are in the healthcare environment. You are on stage, if you will; you are face-to-face with your guest, face-to-face with that patient. That alone will really determine the climate and the quality of the experience.