Do You Expect To Pay For A Consultation With A Surgeon?

There is always a debate as to whether to charge for consultations or offer them for free.

In fact I did a blog post a few years ago discussing the topic.

Traditionally a consultation with a doctor would carry with it a fee as you might expect with any professional service.

However, things are different in plastic surgery for two reasons.

1. First of all, plastic surgery is a very ‘surgical’ speciality. There is very little in the way of diagnosis and the skill and expertise is very much weighted towards the surgical ability of the surgeon rather than any clever diagnosis. It might be required in other surgical specialities such as general surgery if you presented with abdominal pain.  Most people present to a plastic surgeon with a cosmetic feature that they dislike and they have an idea about how they would like it to be corrected, and so we understand the reluctance to pay a large consultation fee.
2. Furthermore, a lot of plastic surgery is provided by commercial clinics and they routinely offer free consultations although admittedly these are often not with the surgeon themselves. This has created an expectation amongst patients to receive a free consultation. Because all of the surgeons here at the Staiano Clinic are members of the Plastic Surgery Professional Associations, BAPRAS or BAAPS, we are bound by professional guidelines and free consultations are not encouraged as we are doctors providing a professional service and we certainly do not want to be seen to be encouraging or coercing patients to have surgery.

We do charge a consultation fee.

However, I am very aware that there might be some resistance to pay a consultation fee, because you might not be able to have the surgery that you wanted, or what if you just do not like the surgeon, or are unhappy with the opinion given.

I have always stressed that the ethos behind the clinic is to create happy patients.

We are not about achieving targets and goals in relation to conversions or number of operations.

The key metric that I judge our performance on is whether our patients are happy or not.

We charge a consultation fee because I believe that there is value in coming to speak to one of us.

We are specialists in our field and we will always try and give you the best opinion on what might be right for you.

There are too many people in the cosmetic surgery world who are generalists and will operate on any part of the body, whereas here at The STAIANO Clinic everyone is a specialist with specialist knowledge and experience.

I believe that we give value to our patients and we do not take it lightly that there is a charge associated with the consultation.

Satisfaction Guarantee

That is why we have our satisfaction guarantee because if you feel that your consultation has been unhelpful or if you are not suitable for surgery, we offer a no quibble, no questions asked, full refund of your consultation fee paid.

We only ever charge for your initial consultation and all future consultations will be free, whether they are before or after surgery.

In fact we encourage our patients to come back for at least one more consultation to go over things before going ahead with surgery.

We also offer emotional support from a counsellor who specialises in the field of body image and weight management for all of our patients.

I think that you will find that if you come to The Staiano Clinic for a consultation, we will give you our best advice and you will feel the value that we offer every patient.

We are constantly striving to provide more value and to lift ourselves above the many poor standards and practices that the media loves to report on in the cosmetic surgery world.

We want to be the leading provider of cosmetic surgery that stands for quality and service and we will not be able to do this unless we can deliver over and above expectations to all of our patients.

Call us now on 0121-454 3680 or drop us an email to give us a chance to show you what world class service looks like.

Book A Consultation Online Here

I was lucky enough to have been invited to be a speaker at the the annual conference of plastic surgeons (BAAPS 2017) a couple of weeks ago.
My message to the BAAPS Conference was about how important it is to look after your patients.
Most of the conference was dedicated to strategies and techniques to improve surgical outcomes and this is undoubtedly important.
But I think that a lot of surgeons lose sight of the other aspects that go towards a successful outcome and a happy patient.
Things like:

• Is your clinic easy to find?
• Is it easy to park?
• Are the receptionist and clinic staff welcoming?
• Do you provide an atmosphere where patients feel they have the time and space they need to make an informed decision?
• Do you support patients after they have seen you in clinic and after they have had their procedure?

I was asked to talk at the meeting because this is where I have invested a lot of time and energy and this is the main reason that I opened my own clinic.
So that I can control all of these aspects of your experience.
I have built my practice around my goals and values.
There is more to surgery than the traditional aspects that we tend to measure “ things like infection rates, or time to wound healing or revision rates.
I realise that the difference between a happy patient and an unhappy patient is not necessarily completely dependent on the surgical result.
My goal is to develop a world class service at The Staiano Clinic and I know that to do this, we need to not only deliver the best surgical outcomes possible, but we also need to give excellent service and look after patients before, during and after their treatment.
I am continually working towards my goal and I was delighted to be able to share my experience with my plastic surgery colleagues at BAAPS 2017.
The ultimate judge of our service is you and you can help to shape the service that we offer.
If you have any comments or feedback, then please let us know because we are continually trying to improve the service and this culture of improvement will never stop.
We aim to practice what we preach, so feel free to leave comments below or email us and help us to maintain our standards.

People are often surprised at how diverse a plastic surgeon’s skills extend.
We are one of the only medical specialities that can operate on any part of the body.
We are trained in:

• Cancer reconstruction in the head and neck, breast and skin
• Treatment of burns
• Hand injuries
• We treat congenital birth defects including cleft lip and palate
• We manage any soft-tissue defects such as lower limb trauma after a road traffic accident or management of pressure sores or ulcers

We can literally operate from the head to the toe.
All plastic surgeons will sub-specialise in a particular field and his or her practice will be limited to that area while working in the NHS.
However, in the private sector, where most plastic surgeons perform cosmetic surgery, there is no limitation to the area that they operate on.
Any fully trained plastic surgeon will be able to do a facelift, a nose job, put in breast implants, do a tummy tuck and do liposuction as well as the range of non-surgical injectable treatments available.
When I was in the NHS, my practice was limited to breast reconstruction following cancer and now that I work in the private sector, I limit my work to breast and body contouring.
This is very rare and most plastic surgeons will at least offer facelifts and botox, even if they specialise in the breast.

In fact, there are only a handful of plastic surgeons that specialise in the breast, and so pretty much every plastic surgeon will offer breast enlargement even if they are trained as a hand or a burn surgeon.

I certainly have a lot of patients who request botox or a blepharoplasty and I am capable of performing the procedure, but the ethos behind my clinic is to provide a world-class service delivered by the most highly trained professionals.

I have been very careful about who I choose to work with me at the clinic to help me expand and grow.

It is great to have Khurram Khan on the team.  He is a Consultant Plastic Surgeon at the Children’s Hospital and he is focusing on all of the local anaesthetic work. His main area of interest is in facial plastic surgery, so he is the perfect complement to the team to allow us to expand the range of treatments that we can offer.

We also have Azzam Farroha, who is a Consultant Plastic Surgeon at the QE Hospital in Birmingham and he specialises in skin surgery and treats benign and malignant skin lesions with a special interest in skin cancer.

I have been very careful how I expand the clinic because it can be tempting to just take on as much work as possible.

However, early on, I set out our Brand Values and I will stay true to these and will always aim to do the right thing.

Ethics and delivering the best results to our patients will always be the core focus of what we do.

As plastic surgeons, we are trained to be ‘Jack of all trades’ and this is one of the great appeals of the speciality, but I feel that we are moving in to an age where the specialist is becoming more important and certainly in the niche of cosmetic breast surgery, there is a need for surgeons who are experts in the field to help to bring the speciality away from some of the negative publicity that it receives.

The variety of surgeons who offer breast enlargement is vast.  In fact, I have written a book about it!

“Never Accept A Lift From Strangers – how to choose the best plastic surgeon for your cosmetic breast surgery”

As is the case with most things in life, it is not enough to be doing excellent work and the success or failure depends on getting the message out there and getting the world to listen.

Please help me to get the message out – share this on Facebook, email your friends and Tweet it on Twitter.

I am always happy to receive comments and feedback, so it would be great to hear from you and if you want to chat with me live, you can find me on Facebook Live at 7pm every Tuesday night, so like our page and I will see you there.

I am often asked to comment on photographs by the media.

‘Have they had surgery?’

‘Have they had a nose job?’

‘Have they had breast implants’

‘What size implants do you think they have got?’

‘Have they got round or teardrop implants?’

I get this all the time.

I understand the media’s obsession with wanting to know whether celebrities have had a boob job, a facelift or Botox.
There is a feature in this week’s New magazine where I have been asked to speculate as to whether someone has had their implants changed. You can read it here: https://www.staianoplasticsurgery.co.uk/in-the-media/ I am always happy to help journalists with their requests. Whenever they ask me questions like this, I have to point out that I often cannot tell whether someone has had surgery or not.
In fact, it is very often the case that the result that I am trying to achieve is not one that is going to be noticeable immediately when the person walks into the room and often no one can tell they have had their boobs done or a tummy tuck but they can often tell that something has changed.
They may get a comment like you look well or have you lost weight? The aim is so that people cannot quite put their finger on what it is that has changed but all of a sudden you are walking taller and you have more self-esteem and feel better about yourself.

Not many people want to walk into a room for people to say: My goodness, look at the size of those!

Of course some people do and it is possible to accommodate that sort of look too. However, I think the general public and particularly the media, seem to think that everybody with breast implants has got enormous boobs that are bulging out of the bra and look totally out of proportion along with their facelift which makes their face look so tight they have a permanent grin and Botox which means that their forehead does not move.

This paradigm of what a plastic surgery patient looks like could not be further from the truth and can actually be quite damaging for the normal patients who are considering surgery.

Many patients feel guilty at the prospect of having plastic surgery and feel that they are among this group of vain and inflated looking subset of the population and they do not really want to tell anyone about it because they feel uncomfortable being associated with the stigma.

If only they knew the truth, which is that the vast majority of patients having plastic surgery just want to look refreshed, less tired and more in proportion.

They often feel deeply unhappy with the way they look.

It could be a female who has always had small breasts or a male who has always had excess breast tissue. It could be a mother who has had children and has lost the volume and shape of her breasts. It could be someone with significant functional problems like neck pain and back pain and bra straps digging in due to very large breasts. Or someone who has difficulty finding clothes and has problems with hot and sweaty rashes in the fold of an abdominal apron, after significant weight loss or pregnancy.

The majority of patients seeking plastic surgery have got valid and reasonable indications to want treatment.

They are not vain and you cannot say there is nothing wrong with them.

As a result the majority of results from plastic surgery, certainly in my hands, can be hard to tell when looking at someone walking down the street or in a photograph. To some degree, if you can tell if someone has had plastic surgery from a photograph then you could argue it is not very good surgery, unless of course the person wanted to be noticed. It is particularly difficult in this day and age with push up bras, chicken fillets and slimming pants to know whether it is a bra or a breast implant causing the D cup.

Of course I understand the media’s obsession with the extremes and how we love to watch embarrassing bodies or botched up bodies.

I guess the TV programme called Making people feel better about themselves or Improving bodies so that they look more natural would not go down so well. As you can see https://www.staianoplasticsurgery.co.uk/in-the-media/ I engage with the media a lot and I am always putting forward positive stories about plastic surgery and how it can dramatically impact on patient’s lives, but they still seem to want to report on the one case where it has all gone wrong.

I guess it is human nature.

Once a website only reported good news for a day and lost two thirds of its readers http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/website-reports-only-good-news-for-a-day-loses-two-thirds-of-its-readers-9905916.html

So yes, if you are a reporter and you want an opinion on whether the latest celebrity has had something done feel free to give me a call

and I will give you my opinion, but the best plastic surgeons will be operating on the people who you never think to ask me my opinion on, because you just think they have had their hair done or are just looking a lot happier these days.