How Patients Are Using AI to Find a Doctor (And How to Show Up)

Strategy · 9 min read · 2026-07-05

“Can you recommend a good physiotherapist near Leeds who specialises in sports injuries?” Type that into ChatGPT today and you’ll get a confident, conversational answer — often naming specific practices. A growing share of patients are now asking AI assistants these questions before they ever open Google. If your practice isn’t part of the answer, you’re invisible at the exact moment a patient is deciding where to book.

This shift has a name: Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO — the practice of making your website and online presence understandable and citable to AI systems, not just rankable by traditional search algorithms. For healthcare practices, it’s becoming just as important as the local SEO fundamentals we covered in our healthcare SEO strategy guide.

Why This Matters for Healthcare Specifically

Choosing a healthcare provider is a high-stakes, research-heavy decision, which makes it exactly the kind of query patients now delegate to AI. Instead of scrolling ten blue links, they ask a direct question and expect a direct, trustworthy answer. Google itself has leaned into this with AI Overviews, which now appear above traditional results for a large share of medical and “near me” searches.

If an AI Overview or chatbot answers a patient’s question completely, they may never click through to a website at all — including yours or your competitors’. The practices that get mentioned by name are the ones that benefit most.

This changes the goal slightly. It’s no longer just “rank on page one.” It’s “be the source an AI model trusts enough to cite or recommend.”

How AI Systems Decide Who to Recommend

Large language models and AI search features don’t evaluate your practice directly — they synthesise information already published about you across the web. That means three things carry outsised weight.

• Structured, unambiguous facts: services offered, location, hours, specialities, and credentials, stated clearly rather than buried in marketing copy
• Consistency across sources: your website, Google Business Profile, directories, and review platforms all describing your practice the same way
• Third-party validation: reviews, mentions, and citations from other sites that corroborate what your own website says

In other words, the same trust signals that support strong local SEO — covered in depth in our guide to building patient trust online — are exactly what AI models lean on when deciding who to mention.

Making Your Website Legible to AI

Answer Questions Directly

AI systems favour content that states a clear answer up front, in plain language, before elaborating. A service page that opens with “We are a private physiotherapy clinic in Leeds specialising in sports injury rehabilitation and post-surgical recovery” is far easier for a model to extract and repeat than a page that opens with three paragraphs of brand story.

Use Structured Data Thoroughly

Schema markup — MedicalBusiness, Physician, Dentist, MedicalClinic, and related types — gives AI crawlers an unambiguous, machine-readable summary of who you are, what you treat, and where you’re located. This is the same schema work recommended for technical SEO, and it does double duty for AI visibility.

Build Genuine FAQ Content

Pages that directly answer specific patient questions — “Do I need a referral to see a physiotherapist privately?”, “What should I expect at a first osteopathy appointment?” — map almost one-to-one onto the queries patients type into AI assistants. Write these as their own sections or pages rather than folding them into generic copy.

Keep NAP and Service Details Perfectly Consistent

AI models cross-reference multiple sources to build confidence in a fact. If your website, Google Business Profile, and directory listings disagree on your name, address, phone number, or even which services you offer, that inconsistency reduces the likelihood any single source gets trusted enough to cite.

Reviews and Mentions Still Matter — Arguably More

AI recommendation engines weigh review volume, recency, and sentiment heavily, because reviews are independent evidence rather than self-published claims. A steady stream of recent, detailed Google reviews mentioning specific treatments and outcomes gives AI systems concrete material to draw on when a patient asks for a recommendation.

The same applies to being mentioned on other reputable sites: local health directories, professional body listings, hospital or referral partner pages, and press coverage. Each mention is another data point reinforcing that your practice exists, is legitimate, and does what you say it does.

What Not to Do

• Don’t chase AI visibility at the expense of real patients — clear, honest content that helps a human reader will also read well to a model
• Don’t stuff pages with keyword variations hoping to be picked up — AI systems are comparatively good at penalising unnatural, repetitive text
• Don’t neglect traditional local SEO — AI Overviews and chatbot answers still draw heavily on the same Google Business Profile and website signals that power the local map pack
• Don’t assume this is a future problem — AI Overviews already appear on a majority of health-related searches today

Getting Started

Start by auditing whether your own service pages could be read aloud as a direct answer to the question a patient would actually ask. Add or refresh schema markup across your site. Audit your NAP and service descriptions for consistency across every listing. And keep asking satisfied patients for detailed reviews — they’re now feeding two systems at once, not just one. Want a website built to perform in both traditional and AI-driven search? See our web design services or start a conversation.