Ask most physicians what they think about patients using ChatGPT for medical advice, and the answer is predictable: concern. No algorithm can weigh a patient’s full history, symptoms, and circumstances the way a trained clinician can, and those accuracy and safety concerns are worth taking seriously.
There’s a separate question healthcare leaders should be asking, though: what happens when patients use AI not to replace their physician, but to decide which physician to see?
According to KFF’s Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust, 41% of adults who use AI for health information say they use it in part to decide whether to see a provider — putting AI directly in the middle of the patient’s decision about where, and from whom, to seek care. For a growing number of prospective patients, that means entering the healthcare discovery process through AI before they ever visit a website or schedule an appointment, often before an organization gets a chance to make its own case. That’s the new question healthcare PR has to answer: is your organization’s expertise visible enough for patients to find, wherever they happen to be looking?
The Reputation Patients See Just Got Bigger
Healthcare organizations have long invested in physician visibility, earned media, thought leadership, strong bios, a presence in search, because those efforts establish which physicians patients recognize as experts. AI is expanding the environment where that reputation now lives. When a prospective patient asks a chatbot which physicians specialize in a particular condition, or what they should know about a health system, the tool doesn’t hand back a list of links to sort through; it synthesizes one confident answer from across the web.
That means the information available about a physician matters well beyond the organization’s own website. A strong bio can communicate credentials, but it’s the body of media coverage, expert commentary, and thought leadership surrounding a physician that gives AI, and patients, the fuller picture. A physician’s public presence has become part of the communications strategy, whether an organization has planned for it or not.
Earned Media Gives Physician Expertise a Public Record
When a physician earns a quote in a respected outlet, weighs in on an important healthcare conversation, or publishes real thought leadership, it builds something durable: a public record connecting their name to their expertise. That record has always done the work PR set out to do, reaching patients, media, and referring physicians. Now it does double duty, giving AI systems the same credible material to draw from when a patient asks about that physician’s specialty.
No single media placement guarantees a spot in an AI-generated answer. The value is in building a consistent, authoritative presence over time, one that reflects the expertise an organization already has. A physician who has spent years developing specialized knowledge deserves more to show for it than a biography buried on a health system website, and strategic PR is what translates that expertise into a presence patients and AI can find.
The Opportunity Is Bigger Than Getting Mentioned by AI
The goal shouldn’t be creating content just to appear in ChatGPT. Chase that alone and a long-term reputation strategy collapses into a short-term visibility stunt. Think of AI instead as one more reason to invest in the fundamentals that have always built physician reputation: identifying genuine areas of expertise, developing an actual point of view, pursuing media opportunities that matter, and consistently putting physicians forward as credible voices.
That work has always paid off in more ways than one: building patient awareness, strengthening relationships with media, supporting recruitment, reinforcing a reputation within a specialty. AI just adds one more reason to make sure that expertise is represented clearly and consistently across credible sources, and gives healthcare PR teams a chance to connect that traditional reputation-building work to the new ways patients are discovering and evaluating care.
What Would AI Say About Your Physicians?
None of this means physicians should treat ChatGPT as a medical authority, or that the clinical relationship between patients and providers matters any less, that relationship still comes first. It does mean recognizing that AI is now part of the information environment surrounding healthcare decisions, and that an organization is better off understanding how its physicians show up there than finding out by accident.
A good place to start is a simple question: what would a prospective patient learn about your organization and your physicians if they asked ChatGPT today? The answer usually reveals a few things: gaps in visibility, opportunities for thought leadership you haven’t pursued, and places where a stronger PR strategy could finally give your physicians credit for the expertise they already have.
Curious how your organization shows up when patients ask AI these questions? Reach out to Nichole (nichole@zilkermedia.com) for a complimentary Brand Audit.