PRIVATE PRACTICE - ChatGPT, Gemini, & AI: What Patient Data Reveals About How PT Clinics Are Chosen

This course will be presented live on September 23, 2026 | 7:00 pm ET / 4:00 pm PT. 

.01 CEUs/ 1.0 Contact Hours
Course Level: Intermediate

Outpatient physical therapy practices are facing growing pressure to respond to artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini, often without clear evidence of how patients are actually using them. At the same time, practice owners must make careful business decisions in an environment shaped by narrow margins, staffing constraints, and changing referral patterns. This session explores how patients research physical therapy care and decide where to seek treatment, using early data from multi-clinic patient surveys across orthopedic, vestibular, and geriatric populations. The session reviews how patients use AI tools, traditional search engines, and practice websites during different stages of the decision process. Differences in behavior based on age and clinical need are discussed, along with the limits of current data. The goal is not to promote new technology, but to help participants understand what the data suggests and where uncertainty remains. The content is directly tied to physical therapy business management through its focus on patient acquisition, visibility, and marketing decision-making in independent practices. Participants will learn how to evaluate claims about AI-driven marketing using a structured, practical framework that reflects patient behavior and real-world practice constraints. The session supports disciplined decision-making and helps practice owners determine when it may be reasonable to ignore emerging trends, when to observe them, and when limited testing may be appropriate. 

Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:
• Describe how patients use AI tools, search engines, and practice websites when choosing an outpatient physical therapy clinic
• Distinguish between evidence-supported patient behaviors and industry hype related to AI visibility and local practice discovery.
• Apply a decision framework to determine whether to ignore, monitor, or invest in AI-related marketing strategies for physical therapy practices.
• Identify which patient populations are most and least likely to use AI tools when researching physical therapy care.