AI is Seeing Your Patients Before You Do

Generative AI is reshaping how patients find care, and who they find. Here’s how to respond.

There’s a new healthcare influencer in town – and it’s always available for questions, always informed, and becoming widely trusted by patients.

“It” is generative AI. Personal chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, along with Google’s native AI Overviews (AIOs), are actively reshaping the new patient journey – often with no input from the healthcare providers the technology is affecting.

Here’s what’s happening: Until recently, a patient looking for a new doctor would search on Google for the specialty needed, or spend time researching their condition or symptoms. They might sift through online reviews or read an article about their condition, click around providers’ websites or social media accounts and perhaps book an appointment.

That process created several touchpoints with the prospective patient, which the provider could manage or influence with a robust digital marketing and SEO strategy.

Now, AI is curating the information for users – reducing both the number of touchpoints and the influence of providers in the patient acquisition process.

• When information is readily summarized at the top of the search page in an AI Overview, there’s less need for a user to click through to the provider websites listed in the search results. Similarweb found that 83% of searches with an AI Overview resulted in no clicks, compared to approximately 60% of searches without the summary.
• 89% of healthcare-related queries now include AI Overviews, according to BrightEdge, which is an extremely high rate for any industry. For treatment and procedure-related searches, the number jumps to 100% (up from 45% in 2023).
• This research doesn’t even account for the private conversations prospective patients are having with AI chatbots, though we do know that 32% of patients now use AI chat tools for doctor recommendations. That’s the same percent of people that Google “best [specialty doctor] near me” to find a provider.

AI is becoming the new editorial gatekeeper. If it doesn’t recommend or cite your practice in its answers, potential patients may not even find your website.

• There’s one important caveat: Google has turned off AI Overviews for hyperlocal healthcare searches. A search like “Orthopedic physician near me” or “in Pennsylvania” will turn up traditional SEO and organic listings.

The practical implications: Your standard marketing tactics, including SEO, content creation, online review generation and social media still matter. But you now need to pair them with a strategy that makes them visible to AI systems along with the prospective patients you’re targeting.

• Your top priority should be validating your credibility. Physician voices, published expertise (such as medically-reviewed articles) and third-party citations carry a lot of weight with AI systems. Providers that emphasize earned media and clearly-written, indexable content (with citations) will build an AI reputation as a trustworthy source worth citing. This should be a long-term, strategic focus that will enhance every other tactic you use.

Technically, you’ll need to optimize your website for AI if you haven’t already. Answer engines need information to be clearly presented and logically organized both on the public-facing site and the backend.

• You’ll need to structure all website data, including office information and physician bios, for AI systems to easily read and cite. This is called a “schema markup,” and can be handled by your website developer or a plugin.
• The backend of your existing content can be a gold mine for answer engines. All images and videos should be optimized with alt text, metadata and proper tagging to ensure they are AI-visible.

Patients are already relying on AI tools to help them find a new doctor. But the good news is that this new healthcare influencer can be influenced, though not directly controlled. With the right strategy to enhance your visibility and credibility, AI can be one more tool that helps to bring patients in the door.