Department of Health’s Response to the Keogh Review

The long-awaited government response to the Keogh review was issued on 13th February 2014.

The recommendations covered many of the concerns previously raised about both cosmetic surgical and non-surgical treatments such as breast implants and dermal fillers. 

Key points are as follows:

1. Action is to be taken to ensure that non-surgical treatments are performed or supervised by clinical prescribers from premises that are approved. The implications of this are that treatments performed at home or in non-medical establishments such as hairdressers will be outlawed due to infection risks, and that many non-medical practitioners will be required to undergo accreditation training and assessment.
2. Work to classify dermal fillers as a medical device will be concluded when EU law permits. Such legislation is currently being studied and should be issued in the near future once formal consultation is complete. Once this legislation is formalised, non-clinical providers will be excluded from administering dermal fillers.
3. A register of all implants, including dermal fillers, is to be created. This will allow faulty batches to be readily traced and identified.
4. Surgeons performing cosmetic procedures are to be trained and assessed to allow them to be entered onto a new specialist register for cosmetic surgeons.
5. All surgeons are to have adequate professional indemnity insurance. Foreign doctors who fail to demonstrate adequate professional negligence insurance will be barred from performing cosmetic surgery. This will prevent fly in-and-out surgeons as it will be the clinic’s responsibility to only appoint doctors on the specialist register with adequate and valid UK insurance.
6. There is to be an introduction of protocol which ensures that adequate patient consent is obtained prior to undergoing any aesthetic procedure, e.g. a cooling-off period between the initial consultation and treatment. Patients will therefore not be pressurised to undergo treatment on same day, and cannot be incentivized to do so.
7. Unethical advertising and promotions, whereby special offers with an expiry date or late booking discount, are to be banned.
8. Full disclosure of any shortcomings identified by professional bodies in relation to an individual clinic or doctor is to be made public.
9. Clinic owners are to be assessed as they are fit persons to run/manage clinics. At present the care quality commission (CQC) does not assess the suitability of responsible persons managing cosmetic practise(s).
10. All manufactured implants, including breast implants, are to be inspected for their suitability and safety. This measure has been introduced directly in response to the 2012 PIP scandal and aims to prevent a re-occurrence of this in the future.

These are just some of the points to be addressed by the government, however many professional bodies have opined that the government have not gone far enough to combat many of the poor standards currently in existence.

In the future, hopefully more measures will be added to increase patient safety in the aesthetics industry.

Find the full report here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/279431/Government_response_to_the_review_of_the_regulation_of_cosmetic_interventions.pdf

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