AI Says You Moved, Closed or Take a Plan You Dropped: The Fix Order

Which record do you fix first?

The one the answer cited. An assistant that states an old address usually shows a source under the sentence, and that page or listing is where the old address lives; the chat window itself holds nothing you can correct. Fix the cited source first, then the identity record every directory copies, then the copies in the order other systems read them. The feedback control on the answer comes last.

The confidence is what makes this urgent. When the Tow Center at Columbia tested eight AI search tools on 1,600 article-identification queries in February 2025, more than 60 percent of the answers were wrong, and the tools answered confidently instead of declining 1Ref 1Klaudia Jaźwińska and Aisvarya Chandrasekar, Tow Center for Digital Journalism (2025).AI Search Has a Citation Problem.That AI search tools answer confidently instead of declining when wrong, and cite syndicated or copied versions of a page in place of the original, which is why the source the answer cited is corrected first.. The same test found them citing copied versions of a page in place of the original. A patient who reads that the office is on Elm Street gets no last-updated line and no hedge, and the copy that fed the answer may be a directory that scraped your old site years ago. If the answer shows no source, the order below still holds, worked as a repair list: it is the five sources, with CAQH and the payers added at the end. A stale fact about a clinician who has left is a separate job, the departure sweep, because the record to correct there belongs to a person.

The fix order, record by record

Six records, in this order: NPPES, the Google Business Profile you already own, Bing Places, Apple Business, your own contact page with its schema block, then CAQH and each payer directory. The order runs from the record other systems copy toward the copies themselves, so a directory refreshing from NPPES next month pulls the new address. Start all six in one sitting.

The address attached to the NPI is what a downstream directory reads when it refreshes; the number itself stays the same through a change of name, address or taxonomy, and CMS calls it a lasting identifier for that reason 2Ref 2Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026).Unique Identifiers FAQs.That a covered provider must report an address change to NPPES within 30 days of its effective date, online at nppes.cms.hhs.gov or by form CMS-10114, and that the NPI itself does not change when a provider moves.. Fix it at NPPES first and the next refresh works for you.

You moved, and the assistant says you closed

When a move reads as a closure, look at the Google profile first, and make the repair on the profile you already own. A practice that leaves an address sometimes has its old profile marked permanently closed, by the owner, by a user suggestion or by Google, while a fresh profile goes up at the new address. An assistant then finds two records for one practice, and the closed one holds the reviews and the history.

Google's rule is that a business can have only one Business Profile, that multiple profiles for one business are against its policies, and that merging two combines their reviews but may lose the replies 3Ref 3Google (2026).Resolve duplicate profiles & ownership issues.That a business may have only one Business Profile, that duplicates are against Google's policy, that merging combines reviews but may lose replies, and that the current owner has three days to answer an ownership request.. The same page tells a business that relocates to update the existing profile with the new address rather than create a new one 3Ref 3Google (2026).Resolve duplicate profiles & ownership issues.That a business may have only one Business Profile, that duplicates are against Google's policy, that merging combines reviews but may lose replies, and that the current owner has three days to answer an ownership request.. So the fix for a wrong closure is to reopen and re-address the profile you already had. If a second profile exists, the same help page carries the merge and ownership flows, and gives a profile's current owner three days to answer an ownership request before the requester may proceed 3Ref 3Google (2026).Resolve duplicate profiles & ownership issues.That a business may have only one Business Profile, that duplicates are against Google's policy, that merging combines reviews but may lose replies, and that the current owner has three days to answer an ownership request..

Fill in the hours on every listing, because an assistant that reads no hours has nothing to say open with, and put a special-hours line on the profile three weeks before each federal holiday. Then show a next available appointment on the profile: a claim of closed is a claim about the future, and a visible slot is the plainest contradiction. That slot is the accepting-new-patients flag at its most concrete.

The old page that keeps the old address alive

An old contact page still returning 200 at its old URL is a source, and an engine will keep quoting it until it changes or goes away. That covers a page on the old practice site, a we-have-moved page with the old address at the top, and a PDF intake packet with the old suite number. Change the fact at the same URL wherever you can. Where the page has no successor, remove it properly.

Bing's Webmaster Tools help, which covers Copilot answers as well as Bing search, says there is no instant permanent removal: the page has to return 404 or 410, or carry a noindex tag, and Bingbot has to recrawl it 7Ref 7Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools (2026).How To Permanently Remove a URL or Page from Bing or Copilot - Bing Webmaster Tools.That there is no instant permanent removal from Bing or Copilot: a page must return 404 or 410 or carry noindex and be recrawled, Block URLs hides it for 90 days meanwhile, and IndexNow or a sitemap speeds detection without removing content itself.. The Block URLs tool hides a URL for 90 days in the meantime, and submitting the changed URL through IndexNow or an updated sitemap speeds detection without removing anything by itself 7Ref 7Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools (2026).How To Permanently Remove a URL or Page from Bing or Copilot - Bing Webmaster Tools.That there is no instant permanent removal from Bing or Copilot: a page must return 404 or 410 or carry noindex and be recrawled, Block URLs hides it for 90 days meanwhile, and IndexNow or a sitemap speeds detection without removing content itself.. The change on your side is the fix; the notification only shortens the wait. Gale announces a provider's changed gale.care page to Bing through IndexNow in the same run that changes it, so Bing's copy of that one page stops repeating the old fact sooner.

A directory that scraped the old site gets the same treatment: find its edit or claim control, change the fact, and write down the date. The longer version is when the directory lists you wrong.

A plan you dropped

The dropped plan is the one stale fact whose correction has to run through the payer, because the payer's directory is a source of its own and the assistant may read it. CAQH's own guide has you update the Practice Locations section, indicate the health plans accepted at each location, then review and attest once it reads Complete 6Ref 6CAQH (2017).Submitting Directory Changes in CAQH ProView.That payer directories draw on the attested ProView profile, and CAQH's own steps: update Practice Locations, indicate the plans accepted at each location, then review and attest once the profile data reads Complete.. A profile last attested before the change still tells every plan that pulls from it that you are in network.

Then the payer itself, in writing, with the date the contract ended and a request that the directory entry be removed. Keep the reply. The check at the end is the payer's own directory search a few weeks later: if you still appear, the fact is still live whatever your site says.

Your own insurance page changes the same day, with a dated line saying that as of this month the practice is out of network with the plan and what a patient with it pays. Where a listing has an insurance field, the plan comes out of it in the same sitting; an assistant asked which plans you take reads the field before the paragraph.

Where the feedback link is, and what it is worth

On the answer itself, in every product, and it is worth a log entry. Google's AI Overview, ChatGPT and Copilot each put a feedback control on the answer, usually a thumbs-down or a report option. The label moves with each release, so look at the answer's own controls first. Use it once per wrong answer.

The log matters more than the click. Write down the date, the engine, the exact prompt, the sentence it produced and the source it showed. The correction happens upstream, in the records the engine copies. What the log gives you is the prompt to re-ask and the sentence to compare it against. A vendor who offers to file the reports for you, or to get the answer changed for a fee, gets the six vendor questions first.

Re-ask at 14 and 30 days, and judge on the second

A stale fact is fixed when the same prompt on the same engine returns the new fact twice, and the second re-ask is the one that counts. One clean answer can be a lucky fetch, so re-ask the logged prompt at 14 days and at 30, on each engine that was wrong, and record the result beside the original entry. If the 30-day answer still carries the old fact and shows a source, start the order again from that source.

For a practice doing this once, the log is a page in a notebook. For one that has done it twice, the re-ask belongs inside the monthly prompt panel, as a fixed row beside the ten-prompt audit, so the wrong answer is checked on the same day as everything else.