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Patients use ChatGPT to find a doctor by asking it whether to get care, what kind and where, and ChatGPT can answer with current web results, links to sources and local results (OpenAI). The scale is large: OpenAI says that of its “more than 800 million regular users, one in four submits a prompt about healthcare every week” (OpenAI, January 2026), and KFF found that “about a third (32%) of adults are turning to AI for health information and advice” (KFF, March 2026). Practices can see whether they are the name in those answers with AI Visibility in Curve Compliance. AI Visibility is a feature in Curve Compliance, and Curve also offers it as a managed service.
Want to know whether ChatGPT names your practice? AI Visibility shows how often AI assistants, including ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini, name and cite your practice for the questions your patients ask. Book a call to see AI Visibility on your own questions, or to talk about the managed service.
How many patients ask AI about health
OpenAI's January 2026 report draws on anonymized ChatGPT message data (OpenAI). KFF surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,343 U.S. adults from February 24 to March 2, 2026 (KFF) and published a follow-up poll on June 17, 2026 (KFF).
| What was measured | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT messages about healthcare | More than 5% of all ChatGPT messages globally | OpenAI, January 2026 |
| Weekly users asking about health | One in four of more than 800 million regular users, every week | OpenAI, January 2026 |
| People asking health questions each day | More than 40 million | OpenAI, January 2026 |
| When health chats happen | Seven in 10 healthcare conversations happen outside of normal clinic hours | OpenAI, January 2026 |
| U.S. adults using AI for health information and advice | About a third (32%) | KFF, March 2026 |
| Adults using AI for health information monthly | 29%, up from roughly one in six (17%) two years earlier | KFF, June 2026 |
| Used AI to help decide whether to see a doctor or seek care | About one in six (16%) | KFF, March 2026 |
| Followed up with a doctor or provider after AI advice on physical health | About six in ten (58%) of those users | KFF, March 2026 |
A growing share of the first conversation about care now happens with an assistant, often when your office is closed: OpenAI says most health-related conversations in the US happen outside typical clinic hours, which it defines as 8am to 5pm local time (OpenAI). For how ChatGPT Health, Perplexity and Gemini are changing patient acquisition more broadly, see AI health platforms and patient acquisition.
What patients ask AI before they choose a provider
KFF asked AI users why they use it. Among the major reasons, 65% wanted quick and immediate advice and 41% wanted to look up information before seeing a provider. About one in five said a major reason was not having a health care provider or not being able to get an appointment (KFF). OpenAI adds that people are consulting ChatGPT “to prepare for their visits with their clinicians” (OpenAI).
Those needs turn into questions where a practice is named, or should be. The questions closest to a booking are the ones that lead to a choice. Here is what each kind of question looks like for a practice:
- Local. A question tied to a place, such as pediatric dentist in Austin open on Saturdays.
- Commercial. A question that leads to a choice, such as best clinic for sports injuries in Denver.
- Comparison. Your practice against a named rival.
- Brand. A question about you by name, such as whether you take new patients or which locations offer a service.
- Informational. A general question, such as what to bring to a first dermatology visit.
How ChatGPT builds an answer about local care
OpenAI's help center explains the mechanics. ChatGPT “may search the web automatically when your question would benefit from current information,” and when it works with search providers it “typically rewrites your query into one or more targeted queries.” It “may use an approximate location based on your IP address to provide relevant local results,” and responses that use web search may include citations (OpenAI).
Two practical points follow. First, your site has to be readable by the crawler that feeds search answers: OpenAI says “Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links” (OpenAI). Google has a similar bar for AI Overviews and AI Mode, where a supporting page “must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet” (Google). Second, an answer is only as good as its sources. OpenAI itself says “Search results and citations can be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect” (OpenAI). See which AI crawlers to allow, how query fan-out works and what to do when AI is wrong about your practice.
What happens after the answer
An AI answer is often the step before a booking. About six in ten (58%) adults who used AI for physical health advice in the past year say they later followed up with a doctor or health care provider, and about four in ten (42%) of those who used it for mental health followed up with a mental health professional (KFF).
That follow-up can start with a click on a cited link or with a later search for your name. AI Visibility ties AI answers to the visits and bookings they bring you, so you can see whether being named turns into appointments. See how to tie AI search traffic to bookings.
How to check whether ChatGPT names your practice
You can type a few questions into ChatGPT yourself, but the same question can get a different answer from one week to the next, and a check from your office reflects only your own area. A repeatable check looks like this:
- Write down the questions patients ask. Use their words, not your service names, and group the questions into topics, such as a service line.
- Put the city in the question. Write the place into the question itself, such as pediatric dentist in Austin, and ask one version for each city you serve. OpenAI says ChatGPT “may use an approximate location based on your IP address to provide relevant local results” (OpenAI).
- Note who else is named. Write down the other practices each answer names, so you can see who leads each question.
- Ask again every week. One answer tells you little. The pattern over several weeks shows whether you are gaining or losing ground.
- Record named and cited separately. An answer can name you without linking to your site, or cite your page and recommend someone else. Those are different results.
- Check that AI can read your site. OpenAI says to “allow OAI-Searchbot to crawl the site and confirm that the website host or content delivery network allows traffic from OpenAI's published searchbot IP addresses” (OpenAI).
Tracking more than one city? See AI visibility for multi-location practices.
By hand, this gets slow once you follow more than a handful of questions across more than one assistant. AI Visibility shows where competitors are named and you aren't, who leads each topic, and which sources AI cites.
What to publish so AI has something accurate to cite
Google says “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary” (Google). It also warns that creating separate content for every variation of a query, primarily to manipulate generative AI responses, violates its scaled content abuse spam policy (Google). So the work is clear pages that answer the questions patients ask, written or reviewed by your clinicians.
AI Visibility turns what it finds into a weekly roadmap sized to what your clinicians can publish, with medical topics flagged for clinical review. It measures what each published piece changes. See how the roadmap fits clinician time and where AI gets healthcare answers.
How Curve Compliance helps
AI Visibility is a feature in Curve Compliance, and Curve also offers it as a managed service. It shows your mention rate (how often AI answers name you), citation rate (how often they cite your site) and share of voice (your share of the mentions among the brands you compete with) for the questions your patients ask, and it ties AI answers to the visits and bookings they bring you. Every week you get a plain-language summary of what changed, and a one-page report to share. See the AI Visibility product page.
With the managed service, Curve's team sets up your questions, competitors and topics, writes the pages on your roadmap, and makes the technical fixes that help AI assistants read your site. Your clinicians review and approve anything medical before it goes live. If your developer manages your site, Curve's team hands them the exact fixes. Each month, Curve's team walks you through your results on a call and sends a one-page report. AI Visibility is available on request: book a call to get started.
In one AI Visibility program we've run, for a HIPAA-focused healthcare software brand, AI assistants named or cited the brand in more than half of their answers to its 40 core buyer questions about five weeks in. Across 184 buyer questions, its site was cited in more AI answers than any competitor's, more than 2.5 times as many as the nearest one.
AI Visibility is built for healthcare: only the marketing question you track is sent to AI assistants, screened for PHI first, and never anything about a patient. Curve is SOC 2 Type II and signs a BAA on every plan.
Sources, checked November 2, 2026: OpenAI, AI as a Healthcare Ally (January 2026); OpenAI Help Center, Searching the web with ChatGPT; OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI Crawlers; KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust: Use of AI for Health Information and Advice (March 25, 2026); KFF Tracking Poll: Use of Social Media and AI for Health Information and Advice (June 17, 2026); Google Search Central, AI features and your website; Google Search Central, Optimizing for generative AI search.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do patients use ChatGPT to find a doctor?
They ask it whether to get care, what kind and where, and ChatGPT can answer with web results, links to sources and local results (OpenAI). Practices can see whether those answers name them with AI Visibility in Curve Compliance.
Do patients really use ChatGPT to find doctors?
Many use AI before they choose care. KFF found that about one in six (16%) adults used AI in the past year to get help deciding whether to see a doctor or seek medical care, and about six in ten (58%) of those who used AI for physical health advice later followed up with a provider (KFF).
Can ChatGPT recommend a specific doctor or clinic?
Its answers can include local practices, since ChatGPT can search the web, use an approximate location to find local results and link to its sources (OpenAI). Which practices it names can change with the question and from one week to the next, so a single check tells you little.
When do patients ask AI health questions?
Often after hours. OpenAI says seven in 10 healthcare conversations in ChatGPT happen outside of normal clinic hours (OpenAI).
Can I check whether ChatGPT names my practice every week?
Yes. Track the questions your patients ask and check the answers every week. Curve Compliance's AI Visibility shows how often ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini name and cite your practice for those questions. See ChatGPT visibility for healthcare.
Does checking AI answers send patient data to ChatGPT?
No. Curve Compliance's AI Visibility is built for healthcare: only the marketing question you track is sent to AI assistants, screened for PHI first, and never anything about a patient. See HIPAA-compliant AI visibility tracking.
Is AI Visibility a feature or a managed service?
Both. You can use AI Visibility as a feature in Curve Compliance, or Curve's team can run it for you as a managed service. AI Visibility is available on request: book a call to get started. Read more about the managed service.
Talk to Curve Compliance
See whether AI assistants name your practice for the questions your patients ask, week by week, next to the visits and bookings those answers bring you. Book a call to see AI Visibility on your own questions, or to talk about the managed service.