Private Healthcare,
according to AI
Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about private healthcare — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Bupa owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
Bupa is the default answer.
Named in 20% of private healthcare answers, typically in position 2.3. AXA Health follows at 13%, Spire Healthcare at 12%.
Every brand AI names, ranked.
Visibility is the share of answers naming the brand; citation share is its slice of all brand-owned pages cited; read→cited is how often its pages convert a read into a citation.
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bupa | 20% | 2.3 | 9% | 24% |
| 2 | AXA Health | 13% | 3.6 | 3% | 14% |
| 3 | Spire Healthcare | 12% | 2.0 | 4% | 0% |
| 4 | Aviva | 12% | 5.0 | 1% | 0% |
| 5 | Circle Health Group | 10% | 2.3 | 9% | 80% |
| 6 | Nuffield Health | 10% | 3.0 | 2% | 20% |
| 7 | Practice Plus Group | 8% | 2.4 | 6% | 33% |
| 8 | Vitality | 7% | 6.5 | 0% | — |
| 9 | RAMSAY HEALTH CARE | 5% | 3.0 | 2% | 50% |
| 10 | HCA Healthcare | 5% | 3.3 | 5% | 60% |
| 11 | Portland Hospital | 5% | 3.3 | 0% | — |
| 12 | New Victoria Hospital | 3% | 3.0 | 3% | 67% |
| 13 | Cromwell Hospital | 3% | 3.5 | 1% | 100% |
| 14 | Lindo Wing | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 15 | Vista Health | 2% | 1.0 | 1% | 0% |
Bupa is named most. That is not the same as being wanted.
Being named is visibility. Underneath it, every answer describes a brand in three ways — how much it stands out, how much it belongs, and how much it is returned to. In private healthcare, Bupa leads attachment at 123 against New Victoria Hospital at 88, indexed on the category at 100.
Each whorl lights one ring per index threshold cleared. See the full private healthcare desire edition →
Before it answers, it goes looking for Bupa.
An assistant does not answer from memory alone. It runs its own web searches first, and whoever it searches for is the shortlist it then chooses from. Across 66 searches in private healthcare, Bupa is named in 38% of the ones that name a brand at all. ChatGPT Web, Copilot do not report their searches, so these shares are measured against the ones that do.
These are the assistants' own searches, read from their answers — not what anyone typed into a search engine.
The referees of private healthcare.
The independent sources AI models cite when answering private healthcare questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.
Circle Health Group converts reads into citations. AXA Health doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Circle Health Group converts 80% of reads; AXA Health just 14%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bupa | 20% | 2.3 | 9% | 24% |
| 2 | AXA Health | 13% | 3.6 | 3% | 14% |
| 3 | Spire Healthcare | 12% | 2.0 | 4% | 0% |
| 4 | Aviva | 12% | 5.0 | 1% | 0% |
| 5 | Circle Health Group | 10% | 2.3 | 9% | 80% |
| 6 | Nuffield Health | 10% | 3.0 | 2% | 20% |
| 7 | Practice Plus Group | 8% | 2.4 | 6% | 33% |
| 8 | Vitality | 7% | 6.5 | 0% | — |
| 9 | RAMSAY HEALTH CARE | 5% | 3.0 | 2% | 50% |
| 10 | HCA Healthcare | 5% | 3.3 | 5% | 60% |
| 11 | Portland Hospital | 5% | 3.3 | 0% | — |
| 12 | New Victoria Hospital | 3% | 3.0 | 3% | 67% |
| 13 | Cromwell Hospital | 3% | 3.5 | 1% | 100% |
| 14 | Lindo Wing | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 15 | Vista Health | 2% | 1.0 | 1% | 0% |
All three models agree: Bupa.
A rare consensus — every model puts Bupa first, and their top-five lists overlap 8%. Winning here means winning everywhere at once.
Brands whose visibility swings most between models — the bar per model, widest gap on the right.
The data behind this chart
| Brand | Claude | Gemini | ChatGPT | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AXA Health | 0% | 35% | 5% | 35pp |
| Aviva | 0% | 35% | 0% | 35pp |
| Spire Healthcare | 5% | 30% | 0% | 30pp |
| Bupa | 15% | 35% | 10% | 25pp |
| Circle Health Group | 0% | 25% | 5% | 25pp |
| Vitality | 0% | 20% | 0% | 20pp |
| Practice Plus Group | 10% | 15% | 0% | 15pp |
| Nuffield Health | 5% | 20% | 5% | 15pp |
| HCA Healthcare | 5% | 10% | 0% | 10pp |
| Portland Hospital | 5% | 10% | 0% | 10pp |
How-to guides carry private healthcare.
Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. How-to guides supply the most citations; Comparisons convert best — 100% of the ones models opened were actually cited.
The data behind this chart
| Page type | Cited | Read but not cited | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| How-to guides | 127 | 15 | 89% |
| Editorial | 94 | 41 | 70% |
| pricing | 60 | 5 | 92% |
| Product pages | 48 | 4 | 92% |
| Comparisons | 29 | 0 | 100% |
| Documentation | 25 | 11 | 69% |
| Other | 19 | 22 | 46% |
| category-page | 17 | 0 | 100% |
Structured data is what separates cited from ignored.
Of the private healthcare pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Structured data is worth 16 percentage points; cites its sources pages fare 59pp worse. Measured within the read population, so selection can't flatter it.
The data behind this chart
| Feature | Pages with | Cited % | Pages without | Cited % | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Structured data | 407 | 84% | 151 | 68% | +16pp |
| Named author | 291 | 80% | 267 | 79% | +1pp |
| Answer up front | 350 | 79% | 208 | 81% | -2pp |
| Comparison table | 159 | 77% | 399 | 81% | -4pp |
| Updated this year | 210 | 72% | 348 | 85% | -13pp |
| Hard statistics | 94 | 56% | 464 | 85% | -28pp |
| Cites its sources | 40 | 25% | 518 | 84% | -59pp |
Practice Plus Group builds pages AI can quote.
Readiness scores each brand's own pages on the structure models reward — a direct answer up front, tables, hard numbers, named authors, structured data, recency, specifications. AXA Health is the widest gap: well-built pages that still aren't converting into citations.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Practice Plus Group | 55 | 44% | 18 |
| Cromwell Hospital | 44 | 50% | 6 |
| Vitality | 41 | 25% | 4 |
| Scan.com | 33 | 67% | 3 |
| Benenden Hospital | 31 | 27% | 11 |
| Cleveland Clinic London | 29 | 50% | 6 |
| AXA Health | 26 | 2% | 103 |
| Bupa | 26 | 12% | 136 |
| Circle Health Group | 25 | 8% | 106 |
| Aviva | 23 | 2% | 104 |
Readiness is the share of eight measurable structural signals present on a brand's profiled pages. It is a build-quality measure, not a ranking of the brand.
The questions private healthcare pages have to settle.
Read straight off the pages AI cited: the consumer questions cited content answers most often. Content that fails to settle these is content models have no reason to quote.
Nineteen more categories.
Method: 20 unbranded consumer prompts per category, spread across the buying journey, run weekly against ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Read→cited uses Claude and ChatGPT only (Gemini does not separate the two). Correlational observations of model behaviour at the time of the run. Data from the run completed Tue, 22 Sep 2026 08:20:36 GMT.