The origin of Dr. Bae

Greg:
I got a couple things I want you to clear up for me. The two biggest questions I get. Number one, is Dr. Bae your real name? And when I go to the office, what’s the name I’m looking for on that thing?
Dr. Bae:
That’s a great question.
Greg:
Yeah.
Dr. Bae:
Yeah. When you show up to our office building is the 2100 Webster Building here in San Francisco in Pacific Heights. And yes, if you’re coming into the building and you’re looking on the marquee looking for Dr. Bae, you will end up at a Korean doctor’s office. You will not end up in my office. So you need to be looking for Jonathan Kaplan, K-A-P-L-A-N.
Dr. Bae:
But the reason we came up with Dr. Bae… I shouldn’t say “we”. Got to give a shout out to Dr. Miami and his CEO, Rosie. They had the idea for calling me Dr. Bae because I’m in the San Francisco Bay area, but it’s B-A-E, not B-A-Y, just to be a little more hip for the millennials.
Greg:
There you go.
Dr. Bae:
But, yeah. So look for Jonathan Kaplan. But it is funny how everybody when they come in, the patients and the families, they all refer to me as Dr. Bae. And I’m not sure they know what my real name is, and that’s fine. As long as they’re in my office and we’re having a good time, and I’m taking good care of them, it’s all good.

What makes someone Board Certified?

Greg:
Jonathan Kaplan or Dr. Bae. You can find him both ways. And Dr. Bae, here’s the other thing I wanted to ask you. I say it all the time, board certified plastic surgeon. What exactly does that mean? And what’s the difference between a plastic surgeon and a cosmetic surgeon?
Dr. Bae:
All right, yeah, this is a big can of worms that you’re opening up, but it is important. So, for the patient, if you’re going to somebody for a particular procedure, you want to make sure that they are board certified in the thing that they are doing on you. So for example, if you’re going to an orthopedic surgeon for a cosmetic liposuction procedure, that’s not a good idea. If you’re going to an orthopedic surgeon, you want them board certified in orthopedic surgery, and you’re doing an orthopedic procedure, that makes sense.
Dr. Bae:
The thing is, and this really comes down to money, is that over the last decade, as insurance reimbursements have gone down and doctors aren’t getting paid enough, a lot of them are looking for other alternative sources of revenue. So you’ll see ER doctors or OBGYNs looking for alternative sources of revenue, which means going outside of insurance and going to cash pay. And one of the things you can do that’s cash pay is cosmetics.
Dr. Bae:
So that’s why you really got to be looking for somebody that is not just doing cosmetics, but actually is board certified in plastic surgery. Or if they’re doing something on your face, you know that they’re a facial plastic surgeon or that they’re a dermatologist. You can find that stuff out on their website. But it’s tricky because-
Greg:
[crosstalk 00:02:53]. Yeah, what I was going to say is, just because you can stitch me up when I go to the emergency room doesn’t mean you necessarily are qualified to do my liposuction. And so, people need to be careful about that. You want somebody who specialized and went to school for plastic surgery like you did.
Dr. Bae:
Right. And so the thing is, saying they’re a cosmetic surgeon, that’s not really the same thing as saying that they’re a board certified plastic surgeon. And I’m not saying that anybody that says that they’re a cosmetic surgeon doesn’t have some technical ability to do a good job. I’m just saying that if it’s truth in advertising, let’s be honest about it.
Dr. Bae:
The thing is, anybody can say they’re a cosmetic surgeon. If they’re an ER doctor, OBGYN, and they’re doing Botox or liposuction in their office, they can actually call themselves a cosmetic surgeon. They’re not necessarily board certified in that in a way that’s recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. You might think, “Well, that’s illegal. If they’re an orthopedic surgeon, OBGYN, or an ER doctor, how can they do cosmetic procedures in their office?”
Dr. Bae:
It’s not technically illegal. They just may not have gone through the formal training that you are thinking they went through. Like, yes, they did med school. Yes, they did at least one year of residency training. But they might not have gone through a plastic surgery training program, or a dermatology training program, or facial plastic surgery. So you just have to look on their website to read. And if they say they’re just a cosmetic surgeon, then they may not be telling you everything. Maybe they were a primary care doctor first.

Do your research!

Greg:
The key here is do your research.
Dr. Bae:
Correct.
Greg:
Do your research before you do anything. You don’t want a podiatrist doing your facelift.
Dr. Bae:
And you don’t want me doing your bunions. It’s not an unreasonable thing. It goes both ways.
Greg:
I’ll let you try. I’ll let you try. All right. Well, thanks, doc… Oh.
Dr. Bae:
Yeah, yeah, no. I was just going to say… Yeah, you’re trying to cut me off, man. All I was going to say is that if people have questions about this, it is very complicated and we just touched the surface of it. If people have questions about if this person is board certified in plastic surgery, or dermatology, or facial plastic surgery, you can direct message me on my Instagram, which is Real Dr. Bae, R-E-A-L-D-R-B-A-E. Not B-A-Y. If you direct message me and you say, “This is the doctor I want to know more about,” I can direct message you back and tell you what I think as far as their board certification. I’m not going to talk badly about the doctor one way or the other. I’m just going to state the facts of what I see on their website.
Dr. Bae:
The other option is you can go to our YouTube page, which isn’t as memorable a YouTube page. It’s youtube.com/pacificheightsps, as in Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery. If you go to that YouTube page, we have a video on there about how to look at a doctor’s website to determine what they’re board certified in. And a lot of people just, again, just type in a doctor’s name in the comment section. I get that message, and then I reply to them about what I think that that doctor’s board certified in based on what I see on their website.
Dr. Bae:
So if you’re feeling lazy and you don’t want to do all the research yourself, you just message me the doctor’s name, and I can get the information back. Again, I am not badmouthing anybody in the process. I am just stating what I see on their website.
Greg:
I was going to say, then you don’t have to do the research. Let Dr. Bae do the research for you. He’ll do it all. All right.
Dr. Bae:
What else do I have to do?
Greg:
All right, now go edit this video, Dr. Bae. Thanks.
Dr. Bae:
Thanks. Great seeing you.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Bae Break: The meaning behind “Board Certified” [video] first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

Maintenance of Certification (MOC) is a program put forth by specialty medical boards like the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), American Board of Surgery (ABS) and American Board of Plastic Surgery (ABPS) to name just a few examples. The idea is for these programs to ensure that currently practicing physicians are up to date on the latest clinical data on the practice of medicine within their specialty. By keeping doctors well-informed, the hope is that this leads to greater patient safety. There is much dissension among physicians as to whether the formal MOC programs administered by the various specialty medical boards succeed in that goal.

Many argue this is just a way for specialty medical boards – when combined, make up the American Board of Medial Specialties (ABMS) or the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) – to increase revenue with annual MOC dues, tasks and exams.

These specialty boards require MOC as a prerequisite towards continued board certification. So rather than intermittent revenue only during the physician’s year of board recertification (approximately every 7-10 years), they can generate revenue on a continuous basis with MOC programs. For this reason, it is very easy to abhor the MOC programs along with their annual dues and busy-work.

What about CME’s

No one argues that doctors should remain current with the latest data in their field. But it’s unclear if MOC (with all of it’s unproven requirements) does this. Moreover, for a doctor to maintain their privileges or ability to remain on staff at a hospital or to renew their medical license from their respective state medical board, the physician must accumulate a minimum number of continuing medical education credits (CME).

But why aren’t CME’s enough? The Maintenance of Certification program has a CME requirement along with many other tasks but why not only require CME’s? Why all of the other tasks? In other words, if MOC and CME are both vehicles towards maintaining continuous education, then they’re duplicative of one another. So which is more critical?

The sine qua non (that without which is not) of practicing medicine is to maintain your state medical license. So if you MUST attend annual meetings and lectures to accumulate enough CME’s to maintain your MANDATORY medical license, then why must a physician also pay annual dues and complete tasks from their specialty medical board for MOC? The state medical boards aren’t requiring MOC. They only inquire about your board certification status.

If the specialty boards had the physician and the patient’s well being as a priority, they would recognize that the CME’s required to achieve continuous education and satisfy the state medical boards are enough. Does this prove that by continuing the onerous requirements of MOC, the specialty boards are simply maintaining their portfolio of cash and real estate?

Throw MOC out?

If you didn’t already strongly dislike MOC, do you now?! So if legislation was making its way through state houses across the country to abolish MOC, would you vote for it? Not so fast!

While the ridiculousness of MOC is clear in many circles, there is a trojan horse of sorts when attempting to throw them out legislatively. When abolishing Maintenance of Certification programs, but still maintaining requirements for continuing education by other methods, legislation can simultaneously weaken the meaning of board certification.

Board Certification

A physician’s board certification refers to the accomplishment of finishing training, passing many exams and “checking off many boxes” that show a doctor has seen a wide variety of disease processes and performed a minimum number of procedures within that specialty. As stated previously, these individual specialty boards compose the largest physician specialty certification organization of the ABMS and the AOA.

Physicians who are board certified in this “traditional” manner are understandably protective of their training and what it stands for. Whether it be out of principal or financial survival, these physicians resent other physicians who do not undergo this same level of training and then go on to practice outside of their primary field of medicine. A classic example in the realm of plastic surgery is a non-plastic surgeon (say, an emergency medicine physician) performing cosmetic procedures.

Surprisingly, there are no laws that forbid an ER physician from providing Botox or offering liposuction in their office. To be sure, a hospital won’t let an ER physician have privileges to offer liposuction within the confines of the hospital. But out of the hospital? In the doctor’s own office? State and Federal law will allow it.

Why anti-MOC legislation could weaken the meaning of Board Certification

Part of the anti-MOC laws that are being passed in state houses across the country have the intended or un-intended consequence of weakening what it traditionally means to be board certified. Put another way, if legislation is put forth that requires physicians to maintain continuous education, but not necessarily MOC programs required by specialty boards of the ASMS or AOA, then that opens the door for an alternative means of education by boards outside of the board-certification-duopoly of the ASMS and AOA. If alternative boards can administer continuing education programs without the same rigorous board certification process as the ASMS and AOA, then the credibility of the entire system is undermined. In other words, the appearance of alternative boards could “water down” what it means to be board certified. So you have a choice to make: down with MOC or up with board certification. Unfortunately it can’t be both.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post MOC vs Board Certification first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

I’m not suggesting Google and their AdWords revenue model have anything to worry about. But I believe the way in which a consumer chooses a doctor is changing drastically. The consumer is no longer satisfied with the curated pages of the doctor’s website.

The perceived power of social media over traditional websites

Now, the patient in the research phase of finding a doctor will want to see the plastic surgeon perform surgery and see their results in some variation of real time. And the best way to do that is by watching them on Snapchat, Instagram Stories or Facebook Live.

The “truest” impression of a doctor, as far as the consumer is concerned, is on the physician’s social media where informal 10-15 second video clips build into a 24-hour story that reveals the doctor and staff in their natural habitat of the operating room and clinic.

It’s not about dancing in the operating room or dressing up in silly outfits which some doctors do. That’s just a distraction from the real power of social media in this context – education.

Some physicians will disagree. They’ll see ‘education’ as a just a euphemism for shameless entertainment. Well, here’s a thought…maybe it can be both!

There’s disagreement on the plastic surgery societal level as well. In a noble attempt to protect doctors from themselves and protect the reputation of the specialty, there are instances of the societies admonishing doctors for some of their social media posts. Determining what is and is not appropriate is such a futile exercise that even the Supreme Court outsourced those decisions when it came to obscenity. It comes down to a community standard. In other words, who is that doctor’s audience and what does their clientele want to see?

Our country is one of diversified opinions and tastes. Attempting to regulate or punish doctors for their social media tactics is futile and unnecessary. If a doctor posts something inappropriate, punishment in the court of public opinion will be swift, uncompromising and fierce. Ask anyone in Hollywood.

The Education War

The other risk the societies take in attempting to curb their own member’s activities on social media is their total lack of control for doctors that are non-members of those societies. There’s a battle out there over who is educating consumers.

A recent Aesthetic Surgery Journal (ASJ) article pointed out that most consumers following plastic surgeons aren’t following plastic surgeons at all. In fact, the most popular cosmetic surgery accounts and posts on social media were from plastic surgeons only 17.8% of the time. So while the plastic surgery societies may want to regulate their own members, doctors not subjugated to the same rules have the consumer’s ear.

As Dr. Clark Schierle points out in a recent Chicago Tribune article, his study in the ASJ mentioned above should serve as a “wake-up call” for board-certified plastic surgeons. “We’re losing the information war, and (we’re) being drowned out by these other players.”

Plastic surgery societies understandably promote the importance of board certification. But I’m afraid those board certification warnings are now falling on deaf ears. When the consumer sees an amazing result on social media, particularly reproducible results day after day on a doctor’s Instagram feed, results will win out over “board certification” every time. Can you blame the consumer for choosing their doctor based on results?

The plastic surgery societies should encourage their members to embrace social media and its educational benefits wholeheartedly. Don’t bother offering warnings, restrictions or caveats. Doctors are adults and are responsible for their actions and shouldn’t have to rely on a society to make good decisions for them. If a doctor can’t police themselves when it comes to social media, maybe they shouldn’t be operating on anyone either.

Dr. Jonathan Kaplan is a board-certified plastic surgeon based in San Francisco, CA and founder/CEO of BuildMyBod Health, an online marketplace for healthcare services that allows consumers to determine cost on out-of-pocket procedures, purchase non-surgical services, and in exchange, the healthcare providers receive consumer contact info – a lead, for follow up.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Social media wake up call for plastic surgery societies first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.