Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) is a framework that helps organizations understand the true motivations behind people’s decisions. Rather than focusing on demographics or surface-level behaviors, JTBD asks a simple yet powerful question: What “job” is this person trying to get done in their life? It's about identifying the progress someone wants to make in a given situation – and designing products or services that help them do that effectively.

In healthcare, JTBD can reveal what patients and caregivers are really trying to accomplish during their healthcare journey. These insights go far beyond clinical goals. For example, a patient undergoing inpatient treatment isn’t just there to “receive care.” They may be trying to feel in control, protect their dignity, or reduce anxiety for their family. These are all “jobs” worth understanding because they influence how people perceive and engage with hospital services.

JTBD reframes healthcare challenges around human needs

When applied to hospital service design, JTBD helps planners and operations teams make more informed decisions by focusing on people’s desired outcomes. Consider a family visiting the ER:

• Functional job: Find out what's happening to their loved one
• Emotional job: Feel informed, safe, and reassured during an uncertain time

If hospital signage is unclear or waiting areas are impersonal, families struggle to complete these jobs – even if the medical care is flawless. JTBD captures this gap and guides improvements that truly matter to the user.

How to use Jobs To Be Done in healthcare settings

Healthcare teams can use JTBD through qualitative interviews, ethnographic research, and journey mapping – tools that uncover unmet needs and highlight moments of friction or stress. At SIVO Insights, we often use a combination of methods to pinpoint where hospital services fall short of helping people complete their “jobs.”

Fictional example: A hospital reviews its discharge process using JTBD. They discover that patients don't just need instructions – they need confidence that they’ll be successful once home. This emotional job (feeling equipped to manage care alone) becomes a focal point for redesigning discharge instructions and follow-up touchpoints.

JTBD aligns teams and drives meaningful innovation

One of the benefits of the JTBD framework for hospital operations is that it unites designers, administrators, and clinicians around a shared understanding of who they’re serving and why. Rather than solving problems department by department, JTBD encourages a big-picture view of the entire caregiver journey and patient experience.

By looking at hospital services through the lens of Jobs To Be Done, healthcare teams can uncover unmet functional and emotional needs – and inspire smarter, more human-centered innovation.

Hospital environments are filled with complexity – but when it comes to patient and caregiver experience, not all complexity is helpful. Designing effective services means understanding not just what patients do, but what they’re feeling and striving to achieve at every step of the journey. That’s where recognizing both functional and emotional needs becomes essential.

Functional needs are the logistics

These are the practical tasks people must complete to move through a hospital system. Think of checking in for a procedure, navigating to a room, or understanding medication instructions after a visit. Functional jobs are easy to spot on paper – what needs to get done and what systems support it.

Examples of unmet functional needs might include:

• Confusing hospital signage that delays patients from finding a lab
• Disjointed inpatient flow that creates unnecessary wait times
• Inconsistent discharge instructions leaving gaps in follow-up care

Emotional needs influence experience and outcomes

Emotional jobs are the feelings and psychological outcomes people are trying to achieve, often subconsciously. In healthcare, these needs have a major impact on satisfaction, trust, and even adherence to treatment plans.

Common emotional jobs in hospital settings include:

• Feeling safe and seen during a vulnerable moment
• Maintaining a sense of dignity and control in unfamiliar settings
• Reassuring children or family members during waiting periods

Imagine a caregiver waiting hours in a crowded, windowless holding area with no updates. The functional job – waiting for a loved one – is technically fulfilled, but the emotional job – feeling informed and comforted – goes unmet. This disconnect highlights the opportunity JTBD provides to close the gap through intentional service design.

Designing emotionally safe hospital spaces

Applying JTBD helps teams think beyond surface-level interactions to build experiences that feel intuitively supportive. In improving hospital service design, JTBD pushes teams to ask: "What deeper experience are we helping this person achieve?"

Fictional case example: A hospital redesign project uses the JTBD approach and learns that what parents want most while their child is in surgery isn't more coffee stations – it’s timely reassurance. So they introduce transparent status boards and assign a staff member to provide real-time updates, fulfilling both the emotional and functional “jobs” of waiting.

Why this matters for hospital innovation

Hospitals striving for innovation must balance operational efficiency with emotional safety. When both sides of the equation are respected, outcomes improve: better patient satisfaction, smoother inpatient flow, more effective discharge processes – with no added burden on staff.

At SIVO Insights, we believe emotional insight is not a soft skill – it’s a strategic advantage. Using the JTBD framework for hospital operations ensures leaders can design with clarity, prioritize effectively, and create spaces that support healing in every sense of the word.

At its core, the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework helps healthcare teams uncover what patients and caregivers are truly trying to accomplish—not just medically, but emotionally and functionally—during their hospital experience. These “jobs” aren’t formal roles or diagnoses. Instead, they often sound like: “Help me feel involved in my loved one’s care,” or “Help me get in and out of the hospital without feeling lost or overwhelmed.”

In the context of hospital service design, JTBD goes beyond demographics and patient types. It looks at episodes of care and moments of experience through a human lens. This shift uncovers unmet needs that might otherwise be invisible in traditional survey results or operational data.

Understanding Functional and Emotional Jobs

Functional jobs refer to the tasks patients or caregivers want to complete—such as finding a waiting area, understanding discharge instructions, or getting timely updates during a procedure.

Emotional jobs are equally critical, even if they’re not always explicitly voiced. These might include:

• Feeling safe and reassured in an unfamiliar setting
• Minimizing stress during a difficult diagnosis
• Knowing their loved one is being cared for attentively

Bringing the Caregiver Journey Into Focus

Many caregiver needs are overlooked in traditional hospital operations. For example, caregivers may feel anxiety when waiting during a surgery or uncertainty when navigating hospital signage. Using JTBD helps hospital planners look at their journey end-to-end, revealing gaps where simple improvements can reduce emotional burden.

Why It Matters for Healthcare Innovation

When you understand what people are trying to achieve, you begin to see service touchpoints differently. A confusing hallway isn’t just poor signage—it’s a frustration that can compound medical anxiety. A delayed discharge isn’t just a timing issue—it may represent a breakdown in communication, planning, or family coordination. JTBD helps connect these dots.

By mapping patient and caregiver journeys through a JTBD lens, hospitals can identify specific areas where design, communication, or workflow improvements can significantly improve the patient experience. This lays the foundation for innovation grounded in real human needs—not just assumptions or benchmarks.

Let’s bring the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) method to life with specific examples that show how hospitals can use it to redesign services in ways that feel more intuitive, nurturing, and effective. While these are based on hypothetical scenarios, they illustrate how real institutions could improve their hospital operations by aligning services with both functional and emotional jobs.

Improving Inpatient Flow with JTBD

Patients often arrive at hospitals during high-stress moments. One common JTBD for an incoming patient is: “Help me know what to expect and where I’m going.” That simple job opens up a range of design considerations:

• Clearer arrival instructions and signage to reduce confusion
• Greeters trained to recognize VIP jobs like emotional reassurance
• Prioritized check-in for patients in pain or distress

By aligning frontline processes with this job, hospitals can reduce unnecessary time in triage, streamline admissions, and minimize distress early in the journey.

Redesigning Waiting Areas for Family Members

For many caregivers, a core job is: “Help me stay connected and feel useful while I wait.” Waiting rooms are often sterile and designed around occupancy—not experience. But with JTBD insights, improvements might include:

• Chairs grouped for conversation and family comfort
• Live updates on screens or app notifications about procedure progress
• Spaces that offer quiet reflection or moments of connection

These changes don’t require large budgets—but they do provide meaningful support that reduces anxiety across the caregiver journey.

JTBD and the Hospital Discharge Process

Discharge is one of the most crucial—and often stressful—steps in a hospital stay. A sample JTBD might sound like: “Help me feel confident going home and knowing what to do next.” Without JTBD thinking, discharge is treated as a checklist rather than a transition. With it, hospitals can:

• Create easy-to-read instructions written in plain language
• Offer a post-discharge follow-up call to reinforce confidence
• Explain medication timing and next steps visually

All of this contributes to improved patient experience and helps prevent readmissions, directly supporting hospital outcome goals.

Through these examples, it's clear how the JTBD framework for hospital operations can unlock innovation by reconnecting services with real human needs—without requiring big, disruptive changes.

Uncovering patient and caregiver jobs is only the first step. The power of JTBD lies in translating those insights into actions that make hospitals more emotionally safe, operationally clear, and meaningfully connected to the people they serve. The good news? You don’t need to overhaul your entire hospital to see results—you just need to start where the jobs are most unmet.

Step-by-Step: Moving From Insight to Innovation

When integrated as part of hospital service design, the JTBD framework can guide healthcare innovation at both strategic and tactical levels. Here’s how:

1. Prioritize the Right Jobs

Not every job is equally urgent to address. Begin by identifying which jobs, if satisfied, would produce the greatest improvement in patient experience or hospital operations. Focus where functional and emotional needs intersect—such as vulnerable patient moments (arrival, waiting, discharge).

2. Co-Design With Empathy

Use workshops or observational studies to map jobs more deeply. Invite frontline staff, patients (or their advocates), and caregivers to co-create possible solutions. This inclusive approach creates buy-in and ensures practicality.

3. Prototype Solutions on a Small Scale

Before implementing complex system-wide changes, try pilot testing your ideas in one unit or shift. For example, you might:

• Test new hospital signage in one corridor to reduce patient stress
• Trial a family-centered waiting area model during surgery schedules
• Introduce simplified discharge materials in one recovery unit

Gather feedback. Refine. Scale what works.

4. Track Outcomes That Align With Jobs

Traditional metrics (length of stay, discharge time, HCAHPS scores) still matter. But JTBD allows you to add new ones like “time to emotional reassurance,” “ease of navigation,” or “caregiver understanding of next steps.” These deeper KPIs help measure the impact of design changes more holistically.

5. Embed JTBD Thinking Across Teams

When hospital departments—from clinical to facilities teams—adopt the JTBD mindset, it supports ongoing healthcare innovation over one-off fixes. Support your staff with training and tools so that this framework becomes second nature, not just a one-time project.

Ultimately, the value lies in consistent application. Data-driven insights backed by real human observation turn JTBD from a discovery tool into a driver of meaningful change.