gsilvera American Patient Series, Blog, Healthcare, Healthcare Design

Yard work and Health Administration: Designing for Delight, Not Just Duty

Let’s be honest: yard work is not fun.

It’s tedious. It’s repetitive. You sweat. You pull weeds only to see more next week. You mow, trim, rake, and then do it all over again. The labor isn’t the reward. We do it because we’re after something else: a yard we can enjoy. A space to host friends, watch the kids play, sip coffee in the morning. A space that feels good.

We don’t want to experience our yards as a chore.
We want to experience them as joy.

Now think about the best outdoor places you’ve been—a neighborhood park, a botanical garden, a golf course, maybe a favorite trail. These spaces didn’t just happen. They were shaped with intention. Someone thought about what you would see, where you might pause, and how you would feel while moving through them. Often, they were thinking about your experience long before you even arrived.

When I was an undergrad, I stumbled into a study abroad program led by the landscape architecture department. I’ll admit it—I chose it because it was two weeks long instead of one. But what I got was a deep, surprising education in the emotional power of space. We used the city of Paris as our classroom and traced the legacy of André Le Nôtre, the visionary behind the gardens of Versailles.

Our instructor talked about more than just beauty—they talked about emotional design. About how great spaces don’t just impress you, they invite you in. You don’t feel directed, you feel drawn. You don’t notice the symmetry or the structure. You just feel calm, or awe, or joy.

Great design disappears.
And in its absence, experience is born.

This idea stretches far beyond gardens.

Take healthcare, for example.

Too often, healthcare administration feels like yard work with its endless checklists, processes, fixes. We dig into spreadsheets. We prune workflows. We patch inefficiencies and pull bureaucratic weeds. Important, yes. But inspiring? Rarely.

But what if we approached healthcare like Le Nôtre approached Versailles?
What if we designed for delight, not just duty?

Think of a hospital or health system as a vast garden.

The CEO becomes the master landscape architect crafting a master vision. Senior administrators are the gardeners, executing on the vision by nurturing the system, correcting what’s overgrown. This analogy goes deep … Your data teams? The irrigation system, quiet, essential, working beneath the surface to ensure a thriving ecosystem of interactions from supply chain to human resources to care delivery. Frontline staff?well they are the flowers, of course, they are the big show and who and what patients will most remember and return to. And the patients? They are the guests in our garden, the ones we design for.

When I was in Paris, we learned about a public rose garden where city sanitation workers hand-pruned each bush, and they did this daily! Not just to clear trash, but to pluck fading blooms before anyone could see them. The designer had envisioned only perfect roses in their original design, and the visitors expect only roses in bloom, and so, to honor their promise to uphold the design and to honor the guests, these workers worked diligently at their tasks and held that promise. That labor wasn’t about aesthetics, it was not about looking like you care, it was about delivering on a promise to provide the best experience. The joy of the visitor relied on the discipline of the sanitation worker.

Likewise, when you smooth out a clunky intake form, fix an IT glitch, or redesign a scheduling process, it might feel like yard work. But it can be the thing that helps a frightened patient feel calmer, or gives a clinician five minutes back in their day, or helps a family find clarity when they need it most.

You’re not just fixing things.
You’re creating Versailles.

Yes, it’s repetitive. Yes, it’s work. But it’s not meaningless. Because when healthcare systems work well, when they feel seamless, inviting, humane—it’s because someone behind the scenes was tending the garden.

So don’t focus on the weeds. Focus on the experience you’re cultivating for patients, for providers, for families.

The best gardens and the best healthcare systems share something in common:
They require constant, quiet care.

And when they’re working just right, you don’t notice the effort.

You just feel better.

gsilvera American Patient Series, Healthcare

From Theme Parks to Seamless Care: What Healthcare Can Learn from Disney

Recently, I had the opportunity to tour a local hospital that has the distinction of being both academic medical center and safety-net hospital. We spent a lot of time examining patient flow and emergency department overcrowding—and I couldn’t help but think about Disney World.

“Wheelchair Person” by Direct Media/ CC0 1.0

Disney is a master of movement—orchestrating guest flow through its parks so that everyone gets to the right ride, restaurant, or show with minimal frustration. For many years, patient experience gurus lauded this model for its highlighting the experience while waiting. The waiting room is an experience, the exam room is another, and then the interactions with the care providers, all of them contributing to the overall experience especially in doctor’s offices. But, lets get real— no one enjoys the TVs playing HGTV non-stop for hours on end. I could go on forever on my distaste for doctor’s office waiting rooms, but it seems hospitals are doing much of the same.

On my visit, I learned of several patient flow innovations:

  • A patient flow coordination room, what they called an “air traffic control room” that tracks every patient—incoming, outgoing, and waiting.
  • Overflow areas designed to help absorb surges in emergency visits, with plans for even more capacity.
  • A discharge lounge which holds patients who are medically ready to leave but waiting for transportation.
"Air traffic control" Patient Command Central
“Air traffic control” Patient Command Central photo by G. Silvera

There’s an entire logistics operation designed to move patients efficiently. The ethos, if I understand it correctly, is sound and perhaps even noble. Patients who need care should be able to access care and if there is a patient that no longer needs care or can be better taken care of at another level, we need to move them along to open up space for the next patient. But here’s the thing: everywhere is full at every level.

We have pioneered systems to improve intake, and still, patient overflow is an issue. Every innovation that I have seen to address patient flow ends up butting up against the same reality, at some point, there is nowhere else to send the patient. We have organized too many of our systems in this country for the next patient, and, far too often, we have done so at the expense of the patient in front of us.

And I’ll say it again, because it is worth repeating, the queue is not the patient.

Disney Wants to Keep People Moving. Healthcare Shouldn’t.

Crowds line the way to Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom.Credit...Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel, via Associated Press
Crowds line the way to Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom. Credit…Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel, via Associated Press

Disney’s goal is to keep you flowing through different experiences—moving from ride to ride, maximizing time in the park. Hospitals should have the opposite goal:

  • 🚫 Minimize unnecessary patient movement
  • 🚫 Keep care as close to the patient as possible
  • 🚫 Ensure every transfer serves a real purpose

What Healthcare Can Learn from Disney+

Think about how Disney changed retail strategies.

  • Disney Stores once brought the magic to malls
  • Now, Disney+ brings the magic directly to homes

Healthcare is undergoing a similar transformation:
✔ Telehealth eliminates the need for travel
✔ Home-based care brings services to patients
✔ Hospital-at-home models provide inpatient-level care outside traditional walls

Photo by Edward Jenner on Pexels.com

Yet, inside hospitals, we still shuffle patients around— transferring them between rooms, waiting areas, departments, and even hospitals. To what end? What is the meaning behind the movement? Is it for patient’s needs or someone else’s?

What If We Built Minimally Disruptive Hospitals?

There’s a concept called “Minimally Disruptive Medicine” that focuses on reducing the disruption of medical visits—especially for elderly patients who rely on caregivers for transportation and support.

What if we applied this thinking inside hospitals?

  • Fewer unnecessary transfers
  • More bedside diagnostics and treatment
  • Care moving to patients, instead of patients moving to care

I am not sure what it would look like exactly, but I have an image of care providers moving through a patient room rather than patients moving through the hospital. For the clinically inclined, what if instead of being the blood that pumps through the hospital, patients were the heart. I encourage us all to think more critically about how disruptively care is currently modeled. Because in the end, patients are not guests in our hospitals.


We are guests in their lives.

“Caregiver Nurse” by Direct Media/ CC0 1.0

What Do You Think?

Are we designing hospitals for operational efficiency instead of patient dignity? How can we make hospital care less disruptive and more patient-centered?

Drop your thoughts in the comments—I’d love to hear your perspective.

#PatientExperience #HealthcareLeadership #MinimallyInvasiveCare #HospitalFlow #PatientFirst #Disney #HealthcareInnovation