How is Google’s AI changing the way patients find a practice?
- Google’s AI features (Ask Maps, AI-generated business info, “Know before you go,” and review summaries) all draw from a practice’s Google Business Profile and reviews, so incomplete profiles get skipped or described inaccurately.
- Listing accepted insurance plans accurately is one of the highest-impact details, because patients often search by their plan and the AI can only put a practice forward for coverage it can confirm.
- HIPAA still applies: practices can earn recent, specific reviews to shape AI summaries, but should respond in general terms and never confirm someone is a patient or reference their treatment.
A woman who just changed jobs and changed insurance along with it, opens Google Maps on a Sunday night and asks it, in plain words, “dermatologist near me that takes my plan and has a Saturday opening.” She doesn’t scroll through a list. Google reads the profiles and answers her. Two practices in town take her plan, and both have Saturday hours. Only one of them put that on its Google Business Profile. That’s the one she books. The other practice was a perfect fit, and it never came up, because the answer wasn’t sitting in reality. It was sitting in the profile.
If you run the front office at a practice, that one probably lands a little close to home. You take good care of the patients who walk through the door. The harder part now is the patients who never make it that far, the ones who get an answer from Google before they ever see your name. The good news is that what decides that answer is mostly in your hands, and a lot of it you can sort out this week.
Google has been layering AI into local search, and for a healthcare practice, that means patients are getting answers about you before they land on your website or call the front desk. Every one of these new features reads the same two things: your Google Business Profile and your reviews. So the practice with a complete, accurate profile gets found and described correctly. The one with blank fields gets skipped, or described by Google’s best guess. The basics haven’t changed; they just matter more than ever before.
A patient can ask Google a whole question now, and “Ask Maps” answers it
Google put its AI, Gemini, right inside Maps, so a patient can ask a full question instead of typing a couple of keywords. “Chiropractor near me that takes [plan] and can see me this week” gets a straight answer. The catch for you is that the answer comes from what’s on your profile. If your accepted insurance, your hours, and your services aren’t filled in, you’re not in that answer, even when you would have been the right call.
This is why the insurance list is the first thing I’d fix. Patients very often find a practice through their plan before anything else. If Google can’t confirm you take it, the AI can’t put you forward for it. You could be in-network and never know how many patients searched and then moved on.
Google is writing its own description of your practice, and it can get it wrong
Google also uses AI to write descriptions and fill in service details for listings, pulling from your profile and whatever else it can find. When a field is blank, it fills the gap with its best guess. A dermatology practice that does both medical and cosmetic work, but only ever lists “skin care,” can end up described in a way that misses half of what it does.
The fix sits upstream of the AI. Write your own services, your specialties, and your description, in your words, so the AI has the real thing to work from instead of guessing. Your accepted plans and your specialties are the details to get right first.
“Know before you go,” and the nervous first-time patient
Google also pulls together what a patient should know before a visit, based on details from your profile. For a practice, that’s the pre-visit layer: which insurance you take, whether you’re accepting new patients, what to bring, where to park, how accessible the office is, and when you tend to be busy.
A first appointment with a new specialist is already a little nerve-wracking. The practice that answers those questions up front takes some of the worry off the table before the patient ever walks in. An optometrist who lists “accepting new patients,” the plans they take, and “bring your current glasses or contacts” is doing right by the patient and feeding the AI at the same time.
Google is summarizing your reviews, and HIPAA still applies
Google’s AI now reads your reviews and boils them down to themes, so a patient sees something like “patients mention short wait times and thorough consultations” without having to read all 200. That cuts both ways. Themes about billing or wait times come up fast, too, and a practice with only a handful of old reviews gives the AI very little to work with.
You can shape that summary by earning more recent, specific reviews. What you can’t do is respond to a review by confirming someone was a patient or mentioning their treatment. That’s a HIPAA line, and it’s an easy one to cross with the best of intentions. The safe move is to respond warmly and in general terms, thank them for the feedback, and take anything specific to a phone call or a private message. And never screenshot or repost a review that names a patient, however glowing it is.
The same care carries over to Healthgrades, Vitals, and Zocdoc, where patients tend to cross-check you. The summary Google builds is only as good as the reviews underneath it.
So what actually stayed the same?
Every one of these features reads your Google Business Profile and your reviews. Not one of them changed the fundamentals. They raised the cost of leaving a profile half-finished. A blank field used to mean a patient might miss a detail. Now it can mean the AI describes you wrong, or leaves you out of the answer altogether. The practice that lost that Saturday booking didn’t lose on the quality of its care. It lost on a profile field nobody got around to filling in.
What the front office can do, one admin block at a time
You don’t have to do this in a single afternoon, and you shouldn’t try. Here’s the order I’d take it in:
- Start with insurance and services. Confirm every plan you take is listed on your profile, and that your services and specialties are complete and current. This is the one that pays off most.
- In another block, fill in the pre-visit details: hours including any evenings or weekends, “accepting new patients,” parking, accessibility, and a clear description in your own words.
- Set aside a block for reviews. Send requests to recent, happy patients so the summary reflects the care you give now. Keep the ask clean: invite feedback, and never reference a diagnosis or treatment.
- Once a quarter, cross-check the other directories. Make sure Healthgrades, Vitals, Zocdoc, and your insurance plan listings show the same hours, address, and accepted plans as Google. Mismatches confuse both patients and the AI.
Do that, and you’ve put the odds firmly on your side. No one can promise you the top of every answer. The practices that keep their information accurate are simply the ones that keep showing up.
What if the front desk doesn’t have time to keep all of this up to date?
Let’s be real about the front office. Someone there is verifying insurance, answering the phone, working through a stack of intake forms, and chasing down no-shows. Keeping four directories and a Google profile in line between calls on a Tuesday is not happening.
That’s the kind of thing Surefire Local was made to take off your plate. It keeps your profile complete and consistent everywhere it shows up, gathers and organizes your reviews so they’re easy to respond to, and flags the mismatches across listings so the AI is always reading accurate information about your practice. If you’d like to see how that looks for a practice like yours, take a quick demo.
The next new patient in your area will ask Google a question, not type a keyword. Google will answer them from a profile. You already do the work that earns the visit. The last step is making sure the profile it reads is yours, and that everything on it is true.
