Being found when patients seek care is now on another level beyond optimizing a Google Business Profile, nailing your local SEO and having a solid mix of reputation management on review sites and targeted paid ads.

Our June 16, 2026, MGMA Stat poll sought to highlight a key question about the shift in search today: When a patient asks ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Perplexity or another AI answer engine which local practice treats a condition, performs a procedure, accepts an insurance plan or has appointment availability, is your practice part of the answer?

Your success likely hinges on whether your business is attempting to win on this latest frontier of marketing, but not everyone is in the arena yet: Most practices (55%) do not have a strategy for AI search visibility, while 35% do and another 11% were unsure. The poll had 218 applicable responses.

What you told us

• Among organizations that said they have an AI search visibility strategy, many responses pointed to broader AI adoption rather than search-specific work. Respondents mentioned Microsoft 365 Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, internal AI tools, AI committees, AI-approved websites and HIPAA/compliance policies. The more AEO-specific responses focused on updated website content, structured physician bios, blog posts, Google Business Profile and social media updates, patient reviews, and specific marketing vendor support.
• Some responses suggest that practice leaders are still sorting out the difference between a general AI strategy and an AI search visibility strategy. Several comments referenced tools such as major generative AI platforms, UpToDate, prior authorization or benefit-verification workflows — important AI-related work, but not necessarily tactics that improve how a practice appears in answer engines.
• Among organizations that said they do not have a strategy, the barriers were mostly practical: time, money, staffing, IT support and ownership. Several respondents said they need more knowledge, clearer leadership, a task force, a workable framework or a better understanding of the benefits, risks and dependability of AI search before prioritizing it.
• Among unsure respondents, the comments suggest that AI search visibility is still an unfamiliar concept. They want a clearer definition, examples of what similar organizations are doing and evidence of ROI or impact, especially for comparable health centers, rural organizations and practices serving similar patient populations.

Why AEO matters for medical groups

For a medical group, answer engine optimization (AEO) should not mean chasing a new buzzword. It means making accurate, specific and current information about your clinicians, locations, services and access points easy for search systems and AI tools to find, understand and trust. That work overlaps with traditional SEO, but it is more operational than many marketing plans assume.

The demand is already there. KFF’s 2026 Health Information and Trust polling found that about one-third of adults have turned to AI tools or chatbots for physical or mental health information or advice, including patients trying to understand symptoms, treatment options and whether to seek care.¹ General search studies also show why old web metrics will miss part of the shift: AI Overviews can reduce click-through to traditional results, while citations inside the AI answer can change which brands still get traffic.²

Healthcare-specific vendor research points in the same direction. Patients are using AI summaries, online reviews and provider profiles together as they decide where to book. Those reports should be read with the usual caveats, but they are consistent with what practice leaders already see in the field: Patients arrive having done more research, from more sources, before they call.³

MGMA’s recent AI search articles sharpen the issue for independent and midsize groups. In one May 2026 analysis, 200 independent practices sampled from NPPES were tested across roughly 4,950 patient-realistic ChatGPT prompts. None were both named and cited.⁴ A follow-up analysis of more than 33,000 ChatGPT citation events found that the sources AI tools use are not limited to a practice’s own website. Hospital rosters, specialty-association credentialing pages, state medical boards, regional “Top Doctors” lists and practice-owned pages all mattered; national medical directories were a smaller share of the citation surface than many practices would expect.⁵

The need among practices for a new AEO vendor will vary, but the administrator, marketing lead, credentialing team and website vendor need the same source-of-truth discipline they would apply to payer enrollment, provider onboarding or referral leakage. AI search visibility is partly a marketing issue, but the inputs sit across the organization.

3 steps to get started

1. Start with a 30-minute visibility audit. Build 15 to 20 patient-style prompts around your highest-value services and access points: “Who treats heavy menstrual bleeding in [city]?” “Where can I get a colonoscopy near [city]?” “Best orthopedic practice for knee replacement in [market].” “Dermatologist accepting new patients near [location].” Run them in ChatGPT, Google Search with AI Overviews, Perplexity and Gemini. Record whether your practice is named, what sources are cited, what competitors appear and whether any information is wrong. If you use a marketing vendor, ask for a simple table: prompt, platform, answer, cited source, error and recommended fix. Repeat monthly. This gives practices a low-cost way to decide whether the issue deserves more attention.
2. Fix the provider and location facts that AI tools are likely to reuse. Each provider profile should have the same name, credentials, specialty, subspecialty, board certification, languages, locations, hospital affiliations, accepted insurance, new-patient status and scheduling path wherever it appears. That includes your website, Google Business Profile, health system rosters, payer directories, state medical board profiles, specialty society directories and major review sites. Ask your marketing vendor for a discrepancy report, not a vague “AI visibility” dashboard.
3. Give AI systems better pages to cite. A single “services” page listing 20 procedures gives both patients and machines little to work with. Prioritize one substantive page for each major service, procedure or condition that drives appointments. Each page should explain who the service is for, which providers perform it, where it is offered, what patients should expect, when referral or prior authorization is needed and how to schedule. Use plain patient language and have clinical material reviewed by the appropriate clinician. Google’s own guidance for generative AI search still points back to useful, people-first content and a clear technical structure, not secret “AI hacks.”⁶

Additional considerations

• Technical hygiene matters: Confirm that important pages can be crawled and indexed, that provider bios and service pages are not hidden behind scripts or PDFs, and that your vendor has added appropriate structured data where it fits. Schema.org includes physician and medical organization types, and Google says structured data helps it understand page content, though it is not a magic ticket into AI results.⁷ Ask your vendor to validate schema in Google’s Rich Results Test, monitor Search Console and avoid selling you work that Google says is unnecessary for its AI features, such as special AI text files.
• Do not ignore off-site sources: For many specialties, the citation path runs through pages the practice does not own. Credentialing staff can help confirm that specialty-board and professional-society listings are current. Medical staff coordinators can check hospital roster pages for affiliated physicians. Someone should review state medical board profiles after physician onboarding, location changes and departures. If your market has a credible regional “Top Doctors” process, track nomination deadlines the way you track licensure and CME deadlines.
• Reviews still matter, but be clear about what job they do: The Halcy analysis found review aggregators were a modest share of ChatGPT citation events, but reviews remain important for local SEO, patient trust and conversion once a patient sees your name. Press Ganey’s consumer experience work has tied provider choice to accurate online information and scheduling access; rater8’s 2026 patient-choice survey found that many patients will walk away from a physician based on online reviews.⁸ Ask for timely, provider-specific feedback; respond professionally; and fix repeated complaints about phone access, scheduling, staff interactions or unclear instructions.

Conclusion

If AEO isn’t on your radar, the three-step audit and source-of-truth cleanup is a great starting point. If you’re on the fence about why to address AI search visibility, treat this as a patient-access measurement exercise. If AI tools are already recommending competitors for your core services, the case for action is easier to make. If your organization is already working on AEO, keep a close eye on measuring your ROI in patient acquisition.

The SEO tactics that got you to where you are today will become insufficient if they haven’t already, and the goal is not to trick an AI tool into mentioning your practice. But the answer may be deceptively simple: Put accurate, useful, current information where patients and search systems already look. If AI search becomes a larger front door to care, the practices that did that basic work early will be easier for AI to find, easier to share to patients and easier for them to choose.

Notes:

1. Montero A, Montalvo J, Kearney A, Valdes I, Kirzinger A, Hamel L. “KFF tracking poll on health information and trust: use of AI for health information and advice.” KFF; March 25, 2026. Available from: https://www.kff.org/public-opinion/kff-tracking-poll-on-health-information-and-trust-use-of-ai-for-health-information-and-advice/
2. McDonald T. “AIO impact on Google CTR: September 2025 update.” Seer Interactive. Nov. 4, 2025. Available from: https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/aio-impact-on-google-ctr-september-2025-update
3. rater8. “2026 patient choice report: how AI, online reviews, and rising standards have redrawn the path to care.” June 3, 2026. Available from: https://rater8.com/blog/2026-patient-choice-report/
4. Woo N. “Why ChatGPT has probably never named your practice.” MGMA. May 20, 2026. Available from: https://www.mgma.com/articles/why-chatgpt-has-probably-never-named-your-practice
5. Woo N. “Where ChatGPT gets its answers: the off-site map that decides which independent practices get cited.” MGMA. June 16, 2026. Available from: https://www.mgma.com/articles/where-chatgpt-gets-its-answers
6. Google Search Central. “AI features and your website.” Dec. 10, 2025. Google. Available from: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
7. Google Search Central. “Introduction to structured data markup in Google Search.” Google. Dec. 10, 2025. Available from: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data
8. Press Ganey. “Consumer experience in healthcare.” Aug. 29, 2025. Available from: https://www.pressganey.com/resources/e-books/cx-report/