Patients are increasingly treating physician selection like a consumer decision, with online ratings, reviews and AI-generated recommendations becoming major influences on where they seek care. A 2026 rater8 survey of 992 U.S. adults found that 75% of patients will not consider a physician rated below 4.0 stars, while 44% require at least 4.5 stars. Negative experiences are driven more by rude or unhelpful staff and feeling that the doctor did not listen than by wait times or billing issues.
The bigger shift is AI: among patients who searched for a new doctor, AI tools influenced provider choice for 36%, ahead of Google and physician referrals, while 39% of patients who actually switched providers cited AI as a major influence. Yet AI-generated information is far from perfect—66% of patients who used AI to research providers encountered incorrect information, and many still trusted the summaries without verifying them. The article also highlights a growing visibility problem for independent practices: research cited by Medical Economics found that ChatGPT cited none of 200 randomly selected independent practices in nearly 4,950 patient-style searches.