If you think about how a new patient actually finds you these days, it almost never starts at your front door anymore. It starts on a phone or on a computer when someone searches your name and your reviews and views your website. In a recent panel discussion I moderated at the Vision Source Exchange, 3 panelist doctors said they have even had some patients mention they found them using an artificial intelligence (AI) model like ChatGPT. Furthermore, these practices all have online schedulers available on their website and notice their schedules get booked overnight when their doors are closed and phones aren’t being answered. By the time a new patient checks in, they’ve mostly decided who you are and how the appointment is going to feel from these preliminary experiences. I am certain many of you are seeing these same trends.
Most of us have spent years building practices that provide the best in-person experience. The exams purposefully aren’t rushed and the staff know patients by name, but the online version of that same practice is often thin, a little dated, or just nonexistent altogether. Today, that gap costs you and it tends to surface in 3 places that I’ll cover in this article.
Patients Are Vetting You Before You Meet
Picking a doctor has started to look like picking a restaurant. In a 2025 rater8 survey of more than 1,000 US adults, 84% of patients said they read online reviews before booking, and over half read at least 6 reviews first.1 This tells us a couple of bad reviews can outweigh a referral from someone they trust.
When your online footprint is nonexistent or inconsistent, you’re invisible to someone choosing their provider. You can be the best clinician in town and still lose that patient to someone less skilled who simply shows up better online because a half-finished profile and 3 old reviews can cause real damage. Being easy to find isn’t a nice-to-have, but a must-have now.
AI Can’t Learn What You Don’t Publish
This part is new and it works behind the scenes. When a patient asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI overview “Who’s the best dry eye optometrist near me?” or “Where can I get myopia control care for my daughter?” the model builds its answer from whatever is publicly available about you. Your website, Google business profile, directory listings, and reviews shape what these AI models claim to be true about you.
Patients are leaning on these tools. The rater8 survey found 70% of patients are open to or already using AI to research physicians, and 26% said an AI recommendation directly shaped their choice. That’s about even with primary care referrals at 28% and review sites at 29%. The same report also found ~30% of patients now trust AI results as much as a regular search engine, and ~20% trust them more.1
A model can only repeat what you’ve made clear, so if your specialties, your services, and the things that set you apart aren’t written out in plain language and organized cleanly, AI can’t describe you well. The spotlight will be given to whoever put in the work on their digital presence, so give each service its own page on your site and write those pages the way you’d explain it to a patient sitting across from you. Also, keep your practice name, address, and phone number identical everywhere they show up. If you haven’t already, finish your Google business profile. Create an FAQ landing page and answer the questions patients really ask. What you’re essentially doing is making your practice readable to the tools people now use.
A Quick Alignment Audit
Run your own practice through these questions:
- Does your homepage say what you specialize in and what makes you different in plain language?
- Does every service a patient might search for have its own page or clear section?
- Is your name and contact information identical across your website, Google business profile, and directory listings?
- Can a new patient book online without picking up the phone?
- Does your site tell a new patient what to expect—from exam length to what to bring to insurance and payment?
- Have you read your own reviews lately and do you reply to them?
- Ask an AI assistant for the “best [your specialty] near [your town].” Does it find you and get you right?
If you said no more than once, there’s your roadmap for the rest of the year.
Set the Expectation Before the Exam
The third gap is continuity. Your in-office experience might be excellent, but your website should be too. Before a new patient commits to your care, they want the basics: What should I bring? How long is a full exam? What’s included? How do insurance and payment work? Think about the questions you have when you’re a patient looking for a new doctor yourself!
Online scheduling ties it together. Eliciting Insights reports that 95% of patients have booked a medical visit online or would if they could, with demand above 90% in every age group, Baby Boomers included.2,3 Another industry report puts the share of patients who would schedule appointments online if they could at nearly 80%, and noted 40% said they wanted to schedule online within the last year, but were unable to do so because their provider didn’t offer the option or they encountered other barriers.3 Further, many consumers said they would switch providers or forego care completely if an online scheduling option wasn’t available.3
According to ZocDoc, “patients want to book 24/7 when it’s convenient for them. Nearly half of all appointments [across health care] were booked after hours, when doctors’ offices are typically closed.”4 Let someone book at 10 pm, tell them what to expect, and you’ve already cut the friction and started the relationship on the same note they’ll feel in your chair. As a bonus, you’ll also see fewer no-shows.
The Through-Line
Stop treating your online presence as marketing and start treating it as the first chapter of your patient experience. The practice someone meets online should be the same practice they meet in person, with the same warmth and the same competence. Get that right and you’re easier to find, more accurately represented by the new AI tools patients trust more and more, and in a better position to set expectations your team can then beat. Get it wrong or ignore it, and you lose patients you never knew were looking.
References
- rater8. The next evolution of patient choice. 2025. Accessed July 8, 2026. https://rater8.com/the-next-evolution-of-patient-choice-2025-report/
- Eliciting Insights. Online appointment scheduling: a missed chance to boost patient satisfaction. Accessed July 8, 2026. https://elicitinginsights.com/online-appointment-scheduling-article/
- Kyruus Health. The 2024 care access benchmark report for healthcare organizations. Consumer insights to help boost new patient acquisition, prevent care gaps, and drive operational efficiencies. 2024. Accessed July 8, 2026. https://info.kyruushealth.com/hubfs/1.%20Resources/2024%20Care%20Access%20Benchmark%20Report%20for%20Healthcare%20Organizations.pdf
- ZocDoc. When do patients want to see the doctor in 2024? Accessed July 8, 2026. https://www.zocdoc.com/resources/blog/article/when-do-patients-want-to-see-the-doctor-in-2024
