Should a physician's assistant have their own GMB listing?

[NickB-Tampa]

We have made and verified listings for the business's locations and for each locations' respective physicians. Should we also make listings for the physician's assistants? On the one hand, I feel that it could make things convoluted (creating listings for each physician at each location has us now managing a prodigious number of listings) but, on the other hand, maximum visibility seems to be ideal as long as it is all above board and white hat, so if Google is okay with practitioner listings for PA's I would assume we should go ahead and do it.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@NickB-Tampa, probably, under a few conditions:

1. If it's not a revolving door of PAs, where someone's constantly being replaced.

2. If those PAs have a distinct medical specialty (if only so you can optimize their bio / landing pages appropriately, rather than in a scattershot way).

3. If you're willing to create bio pages on each PA, with emphasis on his/her specialty.

4. If it wouldn't appear totally weird to would-be patients to see the PAs floating around the local search results.

5. If you don't have super high expectations for the GMB (and bio) pages. They probably won't help you corner the local market, but they may help you cultivate little extra streams of visibility.

 

[BenFisher]

The guidelines are not clear on this, but I am going to give it a no, a forward-facing practitioner is defined as ok, but a PA... I am thinking no. And the management of the profiles as they move to other practices would be hard to manage as well.

 

[JoyHawkins]

I originally was thinking no as well BUT there is actually a category for "physician assistant" so usually that means it's allowed. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a category.

A public-facing practitioner should be someone that generally has their own hours, their own clients, and is a person that people ask for by name.

 

[shively]

I may be an outlier but I have never requested a PA by name. I am typically requesting an appointment with the specialist. If they are not available or if the necessary service doesn't require their expertise I am fine being attended to by a PA. However, as the patient or parent of the patient, I don't request a PA.

If I were a PA I would want to be listed separately from the physicians at the office. I think this would also follow for NPs, CRNAs, and others who earned a terminal degree in their field.

 

[BenFisher]

Nice Joy, good to know on the PA category. I would personally never search for a PA.

 

[mblumenthal]

I thought Phil Rozek's answer nailed the salient points. I would add to his list:
6 - If you have the time and or money to do so
7- And that the time to create, maintain & monitor is offset by the conversions from the (obviously tracked) results

 

[Adam Dorfman]

These are all good comments. In healthcare I typically recommend any provider that has an NPI number should have their own listing if they are employed at a specific location. So DOs/MDs/PAs/NPs should definitely have a listing if resources are available to create and maintain them on GMB and if they have their own provider page at their place of employment. In my experience most healthcare systems want PAs to be discoverable on their own websites as patients often form direct relationships with them and doctors like to be able to refer patients to them.

One other thing to consider is that healthcare directories like Healthgrades and WebMD typically want and list PA data so you can repurpose the listing data there as well.