I often find myself conflicted when I see a patient in a social situation. At first, maybe that doesn’t seem like a thorny issue. But if you think about it for just a second, you’ll realize it can be a complex decision-tree of human interaction! Here’s why.

I’m not ignoring you!

Whether it be passing a patient on the street or at a restaurant, things can get awkward very quickly.

Maybe it seems simple enough to say hello. But once I say hello, whomever is with the patient will immediately ask how that person knows me. If we speak further, how do we introduce each other? Do they explain that I’m their plastic surgeon? Do I lie and say “we’re friends.”

To avoid that potentially uncomfortable conversation, the other option is to ignore the patient. But then they’re not sure if I’m ignoring them for their own privacy or because I don’t remember them. If we have that understanding regarding their privacy, that’s great. But the alternative that they think I don’t remember them and I’m only treating them as a number is obviously very mean-spirited and offensive.

The awkwardness isn’t only on the part of the patient. If I’m with my wife and I see a patient, I might say hello. But then my nosy wife will ask how I know them! I typically just say they work at the hospital and leave it at that. That sort of unsatisfactory answer is probably enough information for my wife to drop the subject.

So what’s the right thing to do? What I do now is try to make eye contact, rather than being childish and acting like I don’t see them. Then I let them take the next step. Do they walk towards me and say hello and introduce me? If so, then awkward situation averted.

Or do they see me and look away? If they look away, then that’s that. Sure it’s awkward, but at least I know what they want. And it’s all about what the patient wants!

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

The post I’m not ignoring you! first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

Remove Online Reviews of Doctors

“Doctors and other healthcare providers are reviewed on online review sites, similar to other businesses.  We, however, are not like those other businesses.  These online reviews are an open forum to the public written by patients, who are allowed to share their stories and photos explaining their experiences that they had with their doctor.  Often these reviews are negative and accuse the doctors of complications or mismanagement from medical visits, treatments and procedures that they have had.  Unlike other businesses, we, the doctors, are not allowed to respond back, to defend our case or share any facts or photos to the public because of HIPAA and medical privacy laws.  We, the doctors, find this extremely unfair and unjust.  If patients are allowed to review us, then we should be able to defend the review and be able to state publicly our side of the story.

This is a clear cut prohibition and violation of our rights to defend ourselves and to protect our names and reputations. These reviews that are often one sided, impact our livelihood and medical practices. They also cause emotional distress to the doctors, who cannot explain their side of the story that is out in the public forum for others to read and believe.   Also, many doctors fearing poor reviews will overprescribe and overtest just to “satisfy” patients.  We, the doctors, should not be pressured to do things to get good reviews.  We want to provide medical care not customer care. This effects the care to our patients and society as a whole.

We ask for immediate withdrawal of ALL doctors and providers, who are affected by HIPAA and medical privacy laws, from being reviewed on these online review sites. Until we can defend ourselves, a review should not be posted to which we cannot respond.

This petition will be delivered to:

Yelp

United States Department of Health and Human Services

U.S. Senate

U.S. House of Representatives

CEO, Healthgrades

CEO, Yelp”

The Doctor’s Perspective

It’s an interesting petition. I don’t know the legal limits of passing a law to force a particular review site (Yelp) to disallow reviews for a particular group (doctors). However, the petition makes two interesting points. First, that doctors feel they can’t always respond to a review because it may violate the patient’s privacy rights (HIPAA). Secondly, doctors feel pressure to overprescribe or over-treat to satisfy patients, a topic I’ve addressed here.

Regardless of which side of the debate you’re on, please leave constructive comments below.

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

The post Remove Online Reviews of Doctors first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

If you’re in the market for cosmetic surgery, you may notice lots of doctors now perform their cosmetic procedures in their office. But that doesn’t mean that every office based operating room is created equal! You want to be sure that your doctor’s office based operating room has accreditation. Believe it or not, there’s no law requiring accreditation but I’m going to explain why it’s important, law or no law.

Office-based Operating Room Accreditation

The benefits may seem obvious. Having surgery in an office based operating room provides a personalized, VIP experience. True. But as this post and this post explain, there’s also evidence that going to a surgeon that has the same staff everyday in their own operating can actually lead to better outcomes and lower postop complications.

Additionally, there’s the issue of accreditation. Having an accredited office-based operating room means that you adhere to certain standards. Not the minimum standards but standards that prepare for most circumstances and scenarios. You see, it’s not how your doctor handles expected situations that make for a better experience. It’s the unexpected situations. Going through an accreditation process forces your facility or office to think about those unexpected situations and prepare for them.

Need an example? Yesterday, a major transformer blew out in San Francisco and 600,000 people were without power from 9:30am to 3:15pm. We were in the operating room performing liposuction when the power went out. However, it didn’t matter. Because we have an accredited operating room, we are required to have backup power in the OR. So the anesthesia machine and monitors continued to work unabated. We completed our surgery without any issues.

Consider if you were the patient. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable knowing your life was not at risk during that power outage?! Check out the video below to see what our day was like.

Video: Why OR accreditation is important!

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

The post Is your doctor’s office-based operating room accredited? [video] first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.