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 2.2. Spire Healthcare follows at 18%, AXA Health at 18%.
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% | 2.2 | 7% | 17% |
| 2 | Spire Healthcare | 18% | 1.7 | 6% | 0% |
| 3 | AXA Health | 18% | 3.5 | 5% | 25% |
| 4 | Circle Health Group | 15% | 2.0 | 5% | 20% |
| 5 | Nuffield Health | 15% | 2.4 | 2% | — |
| 6 | Aviva | 15% | 5.0 | 1% | 0% |
| 7 | Vitality | 12% | 5.0 | 1% | — |
| 8 | Practice Plus Group | 8% | 3.0 | 5% | 50% |
| 9 | HCA Healthcare | 8% | 3.8 | 4% | 100% |
| 10 | Portland Hospital | 8% | 3.8 | 0% | — |
| 11 | RAMSAY HEALTH CARE | 7% | 3.0 | 1% | 33% |
| 12 | New Victoria Hospital | 3% | 2.5 | 2% | 67% |
| 13 | King Edward VII's Hospital | 3% | 5.5 | 1% | 67% |
| 14 | Lindo Wing | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 15 | Cleveland Clinic London | 2% | 2.0 | 1% | 100% |
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, Cleveland Clinic London leads attraction at 126 against New Victoria Hospital at 90, 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 Spire Healthcare.
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 69 searches in private healthcare, Spire Healthcare is named in 36% of the ones that name a brand at all. ChatGPT Web does not report its 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.
HCA Healthcare converts reads into citations. Spire Healthcare doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? HCA Healthcare converts 100% of reads; Spire Healthcare just 0%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bupa | 20% | 2.2 | 7% | 17% |
| 2 | Spire Healthcare | 18% | 1.7 | 6% | 0% |
| 3 | AXA Health | 18% | 3.5 | 5% | 25% |
| 4 | Circle Health Group | 15% | 2.0 | 5% | 20% |
| 5 | Nuffield Health | 15% | 2.4 | 2% | — |
| 6 | Aviva | 15% | 5.0 | 1% | 0% |
| 7 | Vitality | 12% | 5.0 | 1% | — |
| 8 | Practice Plus Group | 8% | 3.0 | 5% | 50% |
| 9 | HCA Healthcare | 8% | 3.8 | 4% | 100% |
| 10 | Portland Hospital | 8% | 3.8 | 0% | — |
| 11 | RAMSAY HEALTH CARE | 7% | 3.0 | 1% | 33% |
| 12 | New Victoria Hospital | 3% | 2.5 | 2% | 67% |
| 13 | King Edward VII's Hospital | 3% | 5.5 | 1% | 67% |
| 14 | Lindo Wing | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 15 | Cleveland Clinic London | 2% | 2.0 | 1% | 100% |
The models do not agree on who leads.
Ask about private healthcare and the brand you are shown depends on the assistant: Claude → Bupa, Gemini → Bupa, ChatGPT → RAMSAY HEALTH CARE. Their top-five lists share just 10% of names.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aviva | 5% | 40% | 0% | 40pp |
| Spire Healthcare | 10% | 40% | 5% | 35pp |
| AXA Health | 10% | 40% | 5% | 35pp |
| Bupa | 10% | 40% | 10% | 30pp |
| Nuffield Health | 5% | 35% | 5% | 30pp |
| Vitality | 5% | 30% | 0% | 30pp |
| Circle Health Group | 5% | 30% | 10% | 25pp |
| Practice Plus Group | 5% | 15% | 5% | 10pp |
| HCA Healthcare | 5% | 15% | 5% | 10pp |
| Portland Hospital | 5% | 15% | 5% | 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 | 65 | 7 | 90% |
| Editorial | 47 | 16 | 75% |
| Product pages | 29 | 2 | 94% |
| pricing | 28 | 3 | 90% |
| Comparisons | 15 | 0 | 100% |
| Documentation | 12 | 7 | 63% |
| Other | 7 | 20 | 26% |
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 30 percentage points; hard statistics pages fare 38pp 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 | 197 | 87% | 91 | 57% | +30pp |
| Named author | 143 | 83% | 145 | 72% | +11pp |
| Answer up front | 176 | 81% | 112 | 73% | +7pp |
| Comparison table | 78 | 79% | 210 | 77% | +2pp |
| Updated this year | 97 | 73% | 191 | 80% | -7pp |
| Hard statistics | 57 | 47% | 231 | 85% | -38pp |
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. Vitality is the widest gap: well-built pages that still aren't converting into citations.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Practice Plus Group | 54 | 17% | 12 |
| Vitality | 50 | 0% | 3 |
| Benenden Hospital | 32 | 11% | 9 |
| Cleveland Clinic London | 31 | 25% | 4 |
| Circle Health Group | 26 | 0% | 98 |
| AXA Health | 26 | 0% | 101 |
| RAMSAY HEALTH CARE | 25 | 7% | 14 |
| Bupa | 24 | 7% | 103 |
| Aviva | 23 | 0% | 102 |
| HCA Healthcare | 22 | 43% | 14 |
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 Wed, 02 Sep 2026 07:02:12 GMT.