Question: Can you tell me about the recent college of physician and surgeon’s new Out of Hospital Surgery facility inspection process?
Answer: Recently the college of physicians and surgeons of Ontario has created a regulation which sets out guidelines for facilities providing out of hospital surgery
https://www.cpso.on.ca/uploadedFiles/policies/guidelines/office/ohp_standards.pdf.
Currently this regulation affects a few hundred clinics across the province. These clinics are generally set up to perform endoscopy procedures, cosmetic surgery and pain management.
The regulation will affect any clinic that performs cosmetic surgery including facial cosmetic plastic surgery in Ontario.
The college plans to audit any clinic performing cosmetic plastic surgery, which they define as any procedure which surgically alters tissue with the exclusion of removal of benign skin lesions. Clinics which perform only cosmetic injectables or botox will only be inspected if they are performing permanent injectables for cosmetic purposes.
Question:What does the college of physician and surgeon cosmetic surgery facility inspection process mean for the physician?
Answer: The facility inspection process requires that each clinic complies with a long list of safety standards. The standards require an out of hospital facility to have medical and mechanical equipment be the same as or exceed Ontario hospital standards.While many clinics already complied with most of the standards most facilities did have to incur a cost for the audit process as well as purchase additional equipment to ensure they complied. Examples of equipment purchases include an electrical backup system or generator, air exchange systems, advanced ACLS defibrillator. The typical cost to a facility would be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Question: What does the college of physicians and surgeon’s cosmetic surgery facility audit mean to the patient?
Answer: With the new regulation patients will be assured increased safety in out of hospital facilities. Cosmetic surgery facilities which offer on site surgery in Toronto and throughout Ontario will have met a high safety standard. The cost of the facility will have increased to the cosmetic and plastic surgeon. This may over time increase the cost of cosmetic surgery procedures throughout Ontario.
Sep 06th 2011