What Patients Really Want: B. Joseph Pine II on Transformation in Healthcare

A person doesn’t walk into a healthcare encounter hoping for a service. They want an outcome. They want to feel better, understand what’s next, regain confidence, or improve their quality of life. 

That’s the premise behind the upcoming keynote at NRC Health’s Human Understanding Beyond | HUB26 from B. Joseph Pine II, one of the world’s leading thinkers on customer experience and co-author of The Experience Economy.  

When healthcare leaders gather at the Omni Nashville Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, September 2–4, 2026, Pine will challenge them to rethink a foundational assumption: that healthcare is fundamentally a service industry. Instead, he’ll argue that healthcare organizations create greater value when they design patient experiences that help people achieve meaningful transformations.  

His argument is straightforward: services provide inputs, but people want outcomes. And organizations that design experiences that are capable of helping people achieve those outcomes create more value for everyone involved.  

Join us in Nashville, September 2–4. Register today!

Joseph Pine II is an internationally recognized author, speaker, and management advisor who has presented at the World Economic Forum, TED, CES, and SXSW. He co-founded Strategic Horizons LLP and has spent decades helping organizations understand how economic value evolves from commodities to goods, services, experiences, and ultimately transformations.  

His latest book, The Transformation Economy: Guiding Customers to Achieve Their Aspirations, expands on the concepts introduced in The Experience Economy. The central idea is that the highest form of value creation occurs when organizations help people become who they aspire to be.  

For healthcare leaders, that idea lands close to home. 

After all, the goal of healthcare has never been to deliver services. It’s to help people achieve better health, greater confidence, and more meaningful lives.

Healthcare leaders attending HUB26 will hear Pine explore why healthcare organizations should move beyond thinking about care delivery as a series of services and begin designing experiences that help people achieve meaningful outcomes. His keynote, “The Power of Transformative Experiences in Healthcare,” examines the shift from services to experiences and transformations, and what that shift implies for organizations committed to improving patient outcomes.  

Attendees will learn how economic value has evolved, why that matters in healthcare, and what leaders can do to create more memorable and transformative interactions across the care journey.

According to Pine’s learning objectives, participants will: 

• Recognize the shift from services to experiences and transformations in healthcare.  
• Understand the distinctions between these economic offerings.  
• Identify practical approaches for staging memorable and transformative experiences.  
• Explore how organizations can create and capture additional value through transformation-focused experiences.  

Why the Transformation Economy Matters in Healthcare 

Healthcare organizations have invested heavily in improving service delivery. Access, efficiency, quality metrics, and experience measures all matter. 

But Pine argues that focusing exclusively on services can unintentionally limit what’s possible. A service solves an immediate need. A transformative experience helps a person achieve a larger aspiration.  

Think about the differences between: 

• Completing a successful procedure and helping someone regain independence. 
• Delivering discharge instructions and helping a person confidently manage their health at home. 
• Treating a condition and helping someone thrive beyond it. 

The distinction may feel subtle at first, but in practice, it can reshape how healthcare organizations think about experience design, communication, engagement, and outcomes. 

And perhaps that’s the most interesting challenge Pine brings to HUB26: not asking healthcare leaders to do more, but asking them to look differently at the work they’re already doing. 

The best keynote sessions don’t just introduce new ideas. They provide a new lens through which to view familiar challenges. 

Pine’s keynote promises exactly that: a practical framework for understanding how experiences create value and how healthcare organizations can design for transformation rather than transactions. 

For leaders working to strengthen patient experience, deepen trust, improve engagement, and create more meaningful outcomes, the conversation feels particularly timely. 

Because nobody seeks out healthcare simply to receive a service. They’re trying to become something better on the other side of it.

Healthcare leaders will have the opportunity to explore this idea in person when HUB26 convenes in Nashville, September 2–4, 2026.  

Alongside B. Joseph Pine II’s keynote, attendees will hear from healthcare innovators, experience leaders, and practitioners who are reimagining what’s possible for patients, workforce members, and communities.  

Ready to join the conversation? Reserve your seat at HUB26 and connect with healthcare leaders who are committed to advancing Human Understanding and creating better experiences for every person they serve.  

Register today!