COSMETIC SURGERY REGULATION AND PATIENT SAFETY

THE HARLEY MEDICAL GROUP AT THE FOREFRONT OF INITIATIVES ON GOOD OUTCOMES AND PATIENT SAFETY

image of woman Since 1983, The Harley Medical Group has consistently pursued ethical policies and practices ensuring patient safety, specialist advice and medical excellence.

Setting the Standards

It has long been a key point of policy for Mr Mel Braham, the founder and Chairman of The Harley Medical Group, that only Cosmetic Surgeons, Doctors or Nurses with extensive training, qualifications and knowledge of Cosmetic Surgery procedures should counsel people seeking advice and information about Cosmetic Surgery and Non Surgical procedures. The importance of this standard was finally recognised publicly when the Expert Group on Cosmetic Surgery, established by the Department of Health Chief Medical Officer (to recommend improved regulations for ensuring ethical and honest consultations and advice coupled with good outcomes and patient safety) included this standard as one of its main recommendation in January 2005.

Leading the way

Mr Braham gave written and oral submissions to the Commons Select Committee in the House of Parliament in 1999 which was considering ways by which the regulation of healthcare providers in the UK could be improved. This led to Care Standards Act 2002 and the National Minimum Standards and Regulations giving effect to the Act. Some of Mr Braham's suggestions to the Healthcare Committee were incorporated in those standards and regulations.

Mr Braham, and key members of the medical profession, felt that the new regulations, in so far as they applied to Cosmetic Surgery, were imprecise. So the government was lobbied to take another look at Cosmetic Surgery and, in 2005, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) formed an interdisciplinary Expert Group on Cosmetic Surgery. Its brief was to make recommendations for regulations and standards designed to improve the ethics of Cosmetic Surgery Providers, patient safety and secure consistently good outcomes. In January 2005 it submitted its report to the CMO containing 20 recommendations for improved regulation and standards. Those recommendations included all of the suggestions submitted by Mr Braham to the Commons Select Committee back in 1999. They were unreservedly endorsed by the Department of Health, the Healthcare Commission, the Healthcare Regulatory Agency, and the Independent Healthcare Forum (IHF), of which The Harley Medical Group is a member.

Conclusions

The Department of Health and the CMO accepted all the recommendations and undertook to introduce regulations giving statutory effect to them. The CMO charged the Cosmetic Surgery Interspecialty Committee (CSIC) with the task of developing a procedure-specific training and accreditation programme for surgeons wanting to practice cosmetic surgery in the UK. At the same time he formed a Cosmetic Surgery Steering Group to oversee the introduction of the new regulations and to ensure that they fulfilled the Expert Group's recommendations. Mr Braham was invited to join the Steering Group. He has played an active and prominent role within the Steering Group in moving the regulatory agenda forward.

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