Tax Payers have to bail out private cosmetic surgery botches...
The private cosmetic surgery business in the UK is worth a staggering £3.2 billion a year, but a negative side effect of this IMO rather odd beauty industry is the NHS has to pick up the costs of botched surgeries!
This is not a fringe issue. With a single flawed procedure costing the NHS up to £15,000 to put right, a personal choice in a private clinic suddenly brings a very public cost.
The increasing demand for cosmetic surgery...
Cosmetic surgery has now become normalised, I guess led by high profile, mainly female, celebs who have obviously had work done and have no shame... so there is no longer any social stigma attached to this...
I mean we've all seen our fair share of trout-lipped females walking about thinking they look good rather than well, like trouts, and that's a relatively easy and cheap cosmetic surgery, and I guess that's the gateway procedure for many today... and skin tucks have also seen an increase in demand recently thanks to rapid fat loss induced by the new wave of weight loss drugs.
But while demand is rising rapido, the supply side is not catching up - it's not just the lack of qualified professionals to do procedures, it's also the wider profession and standards and regulation, or lack of.
And Britain has a massive loophole in regulation: any registered medical person with surgical capability can legally conduct cosmetic surgery in the private sector, but more than half of those practicing as cosmetic surgeons privately would not be allowed to undertake such work in the NHS. Britain effectively operates a two-tier level of skill: for those in the NHS, and a very much less rigorous standard for those in private practice.
The NHS as a Insurer of Last Resort
When things go wrong, the cost is not absorbed by the private sector. Patients with infections, failed implants, nerve damage, and disfigurements do not go back to the clinic but appear at A&E. The NHS is left as a safety net insurer in a market over which it has no control.
This counteracts one of the principal arguments in support of a private medical system based on a laissez-faire ideology—that it takes pressure off a public medical service. In truth, cosmetic surgery does precisely the opposite, shifting risk without shifting profit.
An added complexity to this grim picture is medical tourism, where Turkey is highlighted as being available for less complicated work. However, Gill is very adamant in saying this is not just an ‘abroad problem.’ Much of this work is taking place in Britain via a very lax regulation system.
Final thoughts...
I think it's time for tighter regulation of the cosmetic surgery sector!
https://www.reddit.com/r/uknews/comments/1q3x93o/tax_payers_have_to_bail_out_private_cosmetic/
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There are many women/men here queuing for cosmetic surgery, I agree, but with others I don't see anything obviously wrong with their appearance, but they feel it needs doing, some to boost their self-esteem, others for fashion, lol.
It is sad that the medical system has turned business-oriented and that medical professionals aren’t being careful.
A surgeon who has no background or speciality in cosmetic surgery would be putting both themselves and the patient at risk, and I would assume very few would be willing to take that chance. It is a malpractice. There's a loophole in the regulation, that is true, but medical professionals are still liable for their own actions and could be sued and could lose their license to practice, which is what keeps them under control.
In my experience, most private hospitals are very strict about reviewing surgeons' training and qualifications. The hospitals I have worked in would not allow a surgeon to perform cosmetic procedures if they were not appropriately trained and experienced.
I have worked in theatre for many years across a wide range of cases, including cosmetic surgery. I have encountered only one surgeon who was not a plastic surgeon performing breast implants and even then, they had been trained directly by a plastic surgeon. Unless there are practices I am unaware of, I do not know of places in UK that allow surgeons with no cosmetic surgery experience to operate freely.
One thing is that there are lots of training courses for non invasive cosmetic procedures for non medical people. These are the ones I worried as there is no in-depth understanding of human physiology; they are basically trained to use a machine to perform certain procedures on the patient, then they open their own clinics. When complications arise, they cannot deal with them, and they have no license to lose either. People should be careful where they go.
I also suspect many of the complications may be linked to surgeons who fly into England to operate and then leave shortly afterwards (fly-in surgeon), some private hospitals do allow such arrangements. In those situations, patients may indeed end up in NHS A&E because sometimes proper follow-up care is unavailable. I have seen this happen.
However, throughout my experience, patients who develop complications such as infection or haematoma usually return to the same private hospital and the same surgeon who performed the operation, or proxy surgeon if the one who performed is not available. Managing complications is part of the surgeon's responsibility, and it is rare for private hospitals to send these patients to the NHS unless the facility to help the patient is not enough in Private (machines, people, etc)
That said, I can only speak from my own experience, and I recognise that practices may differ elsewhere. I agree, regulations should be tightened for cosmetic procedures.