Healthcare is an industry built on trust, yet trust is rarely what defines it in the public eye. Long-term and skilled nursing care, in particular, has often been affected by outdated perceptions. As expectations change, healthcare providers are being asked to look beyond clinical outcomes and improve the overall experience for patients and their families.
That shift raises a deeper question: what happens when hospitality principles are applied to a setting once defined purely by medical necessity? Increasingly, healthcare leaders are discovering that service and care are not competing priorities but complementary ones, especially in environments where patients arrive during some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.
Jim White understands that intersection better than most. As Chief Culture Officer at Ignite Medical Resorts, he oversees hospitality, human resources and dining, three functions that quietly shape how patients and employees experience the organization every day. His path into healthcare began not in medicine, but in hospitality, a background that continues to inform how Ignite approaches care.
What makes Jim’s journey compelling is not simply his unconventional entry into the field, but how deliberately he has used it to reshape culture from the inside. His focus on trust, recognition and employee experience reflects a belief that strong service to patients begins with how organizations treat the people delivering it.
Let’s explore how Jim is bringing together culture, care, and hospitality to create a different experience in skilled nursing!
From Hospitality to Healthcare
Jim’s journey into healthcare was not a conventional one. He spent 26 years in his first career in casino gaming, working within the hospitality sector before his CEO recruited him to bring that perspective into skilled nursing.
That transition became the foundation for Ignite’s distinctive approach. The company deliberately moved away from the traditional identity associated with skilled nursing and set out to call itself a medical resort. The objective was to extinguish the stereotype of what traditional skilled nursing had been and create something different.
For him, the transition from hospitality into healthcare was also an opportunity to bring a different understanding of customer service into an environment where clinical care remains central. His role has since expanded beyond hospitality. He is also over human resources and the whole dining experience, making the people side of the organization a major part of his responsibility.
From the beginning, the goal was to create a culture that was very employee-centric. For him, the connection is straightforward: having good people executing against the vision of the company is the key model of success for what Ignite stands for.
“Good, happy employees create great, memorable guest experiences,” he explains.
That principle sits at the center of his approach to culture. The organization has put employee programs in place so that employees commit to the job and the company, while hopefully staying with Ignite long-term and reducing turnover. For him, building a strong guest experience begins with creating an environment where employees themselves feel valued enough to commit to the organization.
Building an Employee-Centric Culture
Creating that environment requires more than simply defining a set of cultural values. It requires programs and practices that employees can experience directly.
One of Ignite’s notable initiatives is its rewards and recognition program, Superhero in Scrubs, which Jim developed for frontline employees. Through the program, employees have the ability to earn different rewards, including extra PTO time, cash bonuses, and Ignite swag. For him, putting something like this fundamentally in place helps nurture employees throughout their experience at Ignite.
The philosophy also extends into the way new employees are introduced to the organization. At the building level, orientation is superhero-based. New employees are encouraged to come dressed as a superhero or have some superhero attire on, and every new employee receives a superhero T-shirt.
The intention is to create a more relaxed environment while introducing employees to the culture they are joining. As he explains, “It’s more of a lifestyle, especially on superhero orientation days.”
For him, however, the success of such initiatives depends on leadership buy-in. Having great programs is important, but having the leadership of the company in each individual building buy into what Ignite is trying to create and promote it among their teams is what helps turn those programs into culture.
He is also quick to credit the people across Ignite for that success. He could not do what he does without the foundation of the right people and processes behind what the organization is trying to accomplish. While programs provide structure, it is the people who bring the culture to life at the building level.
Trust as the Foundation of Leadership
Jim believes that if people do not trust their leaders, and they do not have trust in what the company is trying to create, they will not commit themselves to what the vision needs to be. For him, psychological trust is equally important.
Employees need to feel that their leaders can make them feel safe and supported. That trust needs to exist throughout the organization, from the frontline employee and the person they report to, through building leadership and the corporate support structure, and ultimately into the leadership of the company and the CEO’s vision.
Building that trust, however, does not happen immediately. He recognizes that many employees may initially find it difficult to believe that an organization genuinely operates with an open-door philosophy. Some employees may take time before they feel comfortable enough to open up.
That is why trust has to be demonstrated consistently.
Employees need to know that they can come forward, express themselves, share their opinions, and escalate something when they believe it is not being handled correctly. More importantly, they need to see that something happens as a result.
For him, this is where culture becomes reciprocal. When people see that their concerns are taken seriously and that leadership responds, they begin to develop greater confidence in the organization and its vision.
Leadership Means Being Heard
Jim’s own leadership philosophy has evolved over time. He openly acknowledges that he did not set out to become a servant leader.
“Servant leadership is something that doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people. It is something that you need to consistently learn and work on to be able to be seen that way,” he says.
That learning is reflected in the systems Ignite has created to ensure employees have a voice. Open-door and fair-treatment policies provide employees with an opportunity to express themselves and share their opinions without fear of retaliation. They can escalate concerns when something does not feel right.
The company also has a care line through which employees, guests, and family members can raise frustrations, concerns about compliance issues, unfair labor practices, or other matters. Those concerns are escalated to the appropriate person in the company for review, while individuals can remain anonymous if they choose.
For Jim, these mechanisms matter because they create an opportunity for people to be heard and to have what they bring forward addressed without fear of reprisal.
“The ability to be heard, I think, is the biggest piece of any example of leadership that we look at in this company,” he explains.
But having the mechanism in place is only part of the process. People need to trust that the organization is genuinely operating in the way it says it does. When employees feel safe enough to come forward and can see the result of doing so, the relationship becomes reciprocal.
That, for Jim, is an essential part of building a culture that embraces trust.
Where Care Meets Hospitality
Ignite’s model begins with an important distinction: clinical care has to come first because that is why people are there.
Yet Jim recognizes the reality of the patient experience. Someone entering a skilled nursing facility has often already experienced something difficult in the hospital. They may need physical, occupational, or speech therapy before they can safely return home and continue to live their life.
A skilled nursing facility becomes necessary, but it may still be the last place somebody wants to come.
Ignite’s response is to create an atmosphere as close to home-like as possible while maintaining the clinical care people need. Hospitality therefore becomes an important part of how the experience is delivered.
When a patient enters an Ignite building, the director of hospitality greets them at the front door, welcomes them, escorts them to their room, and helps them become as comfortable as possible under their circumstances. The experience continues through dedicated concierge-type service, upgraded amenities, and on-site chefs who can reconstruct or create a favorite meal or provide options beyond the typical menu when appropriate for the patient’s healthcare needs.
The company also incorporates what he calls “surprise and delights.” These are small gestures based on information about a guest or employee that can brighten their day.
He gives a simple example: if someone is having a difficult therapy day and loves chocolate milkshakes, a hospitality director may surprise them with one. That unexpected gesture is the essence of surprise and delight. It demonstrates attention and creates more mileage from the customer service perspective.
The same thinking applies to employees. Ignite puts elements of the same experience in place for its people, allowing employees to see that the organization values them while also demonstrating the kind of experience it wants them to create for guests and family members.
Marrying Care and Service
This connection is critical because one of the biggest challenges is getting care professionals to see service as part of what they do.
Jim emphasizes that care professionals are all about care, and they should be. However, getting those same care professionals to understand the service aspect and care about service is where the challenge has always been.
Ignite approaches that challenge partly by bringing hospitality professionals into healthcare. The company does not typically promote or hire people from healthcare backgrounds into the hospitality director role. Instead, it looks for hospitality professionals who can learn the healthcare environment and the regulatory requirements while bringing a natural understanding of service.
Jim’s own journey is an example of that approach.
The purpose is to bring the two perspectives together. Hospitality professionals understand service and can help orchestrate what happens in the building, while healthcare professionals bring their commitment to care. Over time, the two elements begin to work together.
“That’s how you marry care and service,” he says. “You have somebody that cares about service, kind of orchestrating what’s happening in the building. And then the employees who are really more about care, they indoctrinate some of that service stuff into what they’re doing.”
For Ignite, that marriage is central to creating the kind of culture and guest experience the company wants to deliver.
Measuring the Culture
For Jim, “Culture is not simply something that can be felt; it can also be measured.”
On the employee side, Ignite measures retention and uses onboarding surveys at 15, 30, 60, and 90 days to understand whether employees may be at risk of leaving and to dig deeper into the reasons behind it. The company also uses an employee Net Promoter Score to understand employee sentiment.
Those measures are particularly meaningful within an industry where turnover can often reach 60, 70, or even 80 percent.
In 2025, Ignite’s average turnover rate across the company was 22 percent, which represented a 78 percent retention rate.
The company also measures the guest experience. Post-discharge surveys, Google reviews, and Yelp reviews provide insight into how guests and families perceive their experience.
Ignite also benchmarks its Net Promoter Score against the luxury hotel segment. While healthcare has not completely adopted a whole Net Promoter perspective, he explains that luxury hotels typically operate with Net Promoter Scores somewhere between 40 and 50 percent. Ignite set its own benchmark at 50 percent or better, and many of its buildings reach scores in the 50-something range.
Similarly, the company aims for a Google rating of 4.0 or better. With the exception of a couple of newer buildings, he says all of Ignite’s buildings are above a 4.0 Google rating.
These measures provide a way to connect culture with experience. Retention offers insight into whether employees are choosing to stay, while guest feedback provides another perspective on whether the hospitality-driven model is being felt by the people Ignite serves.
Growing Without Losing the Culture
Ignite’s growth has been substantial. The company is now eight years old and has grown from one building to 32 buildings across seven states as of June 1.
Yet Jim does not view that growth as the end of the journey.
Many people within the company credit him for building the culture that exists at Ignite, something he says leaves him flattered and humbled. At the same time, he is clear that the culture could never have been created by one person.
While he may have had the vision and the backing of the senior team around him, the execution happens at the building level. The people working throughout the organization are the ones who bring that vision to life.
That perspective also shapes how he thinks about the future.
“Nothing is perfect. And as far as we’ve come as a company, we’re not done yet,” he says.
There are still areas of opportunity to continue pushing the company forward in culture, hospitality, and customer service. Jim’s plan is to continue pushing the programs and elements that have helped Ignite reach its current position while gathering support from the people who work in the buildings.
At the same time, the company is taking time to reflect.
After growing quickly through different stages over the past eight years, Ignite is using the coming months to look back at where it is, consider what needs to be fine-tuned, and determine how to move forward. The organization has spent much of its history looking ahead and pushing forward, making this period of reflection an opportunity to assess where it has been before continuing the journey.
It is not about standing still. It is about understanding what needs to be strengthened before moving forward again.
A Legacy Built Around People
When Jim thinks about legacy, he does not point first to a title, program, or individual achievement. He hopes to be remembered as someone who cared and who had a vision to bring employee programs and attitudes, culture, customer service, and hospitality together.
That vision has always been collective.
The growth from one building to 32 across seven states could not have happened through one person alone. It has depended on the people working throughout the organization and the leaders at the building level who continue to carry the culture forward.
Jim is proud of that. He is also humbled by the support he has received throughout his time at Ignite.
As he looks toward the years ahead, his focus remains on continuing to strengthen the culture rather than assuming that what has already been achieved is enough. There are still opportunities to fine-tune the organization’s approach, reflect on its progress, and gather the support needed to continue moving the vision forward.
For a leader who entered healthcare from hospitality, the journey has ultimately become about bringing two worlds together: care and service, clinical needs and human experience, employee commitment and guest satisfaction.
And while the organization has grown from one building to 32 across seven states in eight years, he sees the work of building its culture as an ongoing process.
The clearest expression of that mindset comes from Jim himself:
“We’re not done yet. We still have lots to do.”
It is a fitting perspective for a leader whose work has been centered on creating a culture that continues to evolve, where people are trusted to speak, supported in their roles, recognized for their contribution, and encouraged to carry the vision forward. For Jim, the next chapter is not about declaring the work complete. It is about continuing to build on what has been created, learning from where the organization has been, and moving forward without losing sight of the people who make the vision possible.
