September 25, 2025 • 22 mins
Thinking about plastic surgery? Don’t pick a surgeon until you’ve heard this. In this solo episode of The Trillium Show, board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Jason Hall pulls back the curtain on the cosmetic industry’s marketing hype to give you an honest, practical roadmap for selecting the right surgeon for you.
You’ll learn:
- How to tell if a “cosmetic surgeon” is actually trained in surgery
- Why hospital privileges matter more than flashy social media
- What to watch for in before-and-after photos and online reviews
- How pricing, personality, and complications factor into your decision
Dr. Hall even shares a free downloadable checklist you can take to consultations to help you make a confident, informed choice.
Get the download here: https://drjasonhall.mykajabi.com/surgeonchecklist
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. Jason Hall (00:00):
If you're thinking about having plastic
(00:01):
surgery, do not choose a surgeonuntil you listen to this.
If you spend any time onInstagram or social media in
general, and you have even apassing interest in plastic
(00:22):
surgery, chances are you've seenevery plastic surgeon in your
town, and then plastic surgeonsin other towns pop up in your in
your social media feed. There isa ton of marketing in the
cosmetic space, in the plasticsurgery space, and it makes it
if you don't know somebody, itmakes it really difficult to
choose a plastic surgeon in thisepisode of the Trillium show,
(00:44):
what I'm going to do is breakdown things to look for. Break
down things to look out for, andhelp you kind of make the best
decision you can when it comesto how to select a plastic
surgeon. So welcome to theTrillium Show. I'm your host. Dr
Jason Hall, board certifiedplastic surgeon, author of the
new book, The Art of aging. Youcan see here, you can click the
(01:07):
link in the show notes, go toAmazon, get a copy shipped to
you today. So plastic surgery,medicine in general, used to be
one of these things that peoplekind of talked about, but nobody
advertised in the 90s. All ofthat changed, and you started
seeing billboards. You startedseeing plastic surgeons on TV.
And now plastic surgeryadvertising is absolutely
(01:30):
everywhere, magazines, internet,social media, and that makes it
really hard for people who aretrying to find the best plastic
surgeon for whatever procedureit is that they're interested
in, makes it really difficult toidentify who that person is.
Everybody has something on theirwebsite or on their social media
(01:51):
about how they're the best andyou know, how do you cut through
the noise? So what we're goingto do today is we're going to
talk about things to look outfor and talk about things to
look at, to not to watch forwhen you're looking for a
plastic surgeon, I think thefirst thing is look in the
mirror. The most importantthing, the way to get the best
(02:14):
result, is to understand yourown goals. What are you looking
to accomplish? And are youlooking to accomplish this for
you, or are you looking toaccomplish this for someone
else? You'd be surprised thenumber of people who come in to
see plastic surgeons who arethere because someone else has
(02:35):
pointed out a feature that theythink needs to be changed or a
flaw that they see that theysay, Hey, you know, it's like
somebody telling you that youlook better as a blonde than a
brunette. If that's not yourchoice, you're never going to be
pleased with the result,because, unlike color in your
(02:56):
hair, once you have plasticsurgery, you can't go back. And
so before you even go down thatroad, I think it's really
important to take a look in themirror, assess the reasons why
you're doing this, and make surethat you're doing this because
it's something that you want todo, not something that somebody
else thinks would be good foryou. That's kind of an aside.
(03:19):
The credentialing thing is oneof the big aspects of choosing a
plastic surgeon that can bereally difficult. You know, in
the intro, I talk about beingboard certified, but I didn't
tell you what board it was. Somy board certification is the
American Board of PlasticSurgery. That is the board that
certifies plastic surgeons inthe United States, you can't
(03:42):
call yourself a plastic surgeonlegally without being board
certified by the American Boardof Plastic Surgery. I think even
backing up a step, you need tomake sure that your surgeon,
your cosmetic surgeon, plasticsurgeon, whatever you want to
call it, is actually a surgeon.
Because in the United States,you can do surgery without
(04:03):
actually having any trainingwhatsoever in surgery. If you
look at my diploma from medicalschool, if you look at my
medical license from Tennessee,Texas, South Carolina, places
that I've been licensed and arelicensed now, it says that I
have a license to practicemedicine and surgery. Your
(04:23):
family practitioner, his or herlicense, says the exact same
thing. So you have to be reallycareful that your cosmetic
surgeon is actually a surgeonfirst, and that means that they
went through a surgicalresidency program. There are
four, what we call corespecialties in cosmetic surgery.
(04:47):
Those four specialties areplastic surgery, facial plastic
surgery, so those, those areear, nose and throat and.
Surgeons who have doneadditional training in cosmetic
surgery of the face,oculoplastic surgeons, which are
ophthalmologists, so eyesurgeons who've done a full
(05:10):
residency in ophthalmology, solong word eye surgery, and then
did additional training incosmetic surgery of mostly
forehead and eyes and thendermatology, and they kind of
specialize in all things skin.
(05:33):
None of them get any surgicaltraining, so they are the only
one of the four cosmetic corecosmetic specialists that are
not trained in surgery, so theydon't operate, but they do skin
stuff and non surgical treatmentand lasers. So those are the
only four core cosmeticspecialties. You'll see all
(05:55):
sorts of other specialists thatare getting into the cosmetic
business because it's lucrative.
Just in our area, you've gotoral surgeons who are who are
dentists that went on to oraland maxillofacial surgical
training. You see emergency roomdoctors, you see family
practitioners, you seeobstetricians. And all of these
different specialists aregetting into the cosmetic field
(06:17):
because it's a lucrative field,and that's not to denigrate any
one of them, but you have to,you have to know that going into
this, because you know what mostof the non surgical specialists
do are kind of med spa things,injectables, lasers, you know,
non invasive body sculpting,Things like that. But if you see
(06:40):
one of these other specialistswho are offering cosmetic
surgical procedures, you kind ofneed to scratch your head. That
was a kind of a really quickoverview of the credentialing
behind it. The shortcut to knowif you your potential surgeon,
your surgical candidate.
(07:00):
Surgeon, candidate is an actualtrained surgeon, is to ask them
if they have hospital privilegesto perform the procedure that
you want or that you'reinterested in, because a surgeon
who is adequately trained, whois licensed to do the things
that you're interested in isgoing to have to have hospital
(07:23):
privileges to be able to dothose things. If they don't,
then, you know, they're, they'reprobably shouldn't be doing
those treatments. Nobodypublicizes that you have to ask.
You have to, you know, calltheir office and ask if they
have hospital credentials to dothese things, even those of us
you know, I do 99% of my surgeryin an outpatient surgery center,
(07:47):
I still have to have hospitalprivileges to be able to do
those same procedures in localhospitals around here, because
if, God forbid, we have acomplication that requires me to
go to the hospital and take careof a patient. It has to be a
procedure that I can do so thatI can fix the problem, otherwise
you're left to kind of,whoever's on call for the
(08:09):
hospital taking care of you inthe middle of the night or on a
weekend, and that's notsomething that anybody wants to
do. So that's a that's kind of aquick overview on the
credentialing process behindchoosing a plastic surgeon.
Second thing in that we kind oftalked a lot about this at the
beginning, is the social mediaaspect of it, and I will go on
(08:34):
record, I'm not shy about sayingwhen social media came out, I
was not a big fan, still not ahuge fan, of social media, but I
do see the utility. You'reprobably watching this on social
media right now, if you're notlistening to it in your car, on
the on a podcast, social mediais kind of a double edged sword.
(08:54):
There's a lot of marketing hypebehind it. You've got to know
that going into it, but it is agreat way for you to kind of
interview your potentialsurgeon, by seeing who they are
on social media before you go inthe office, you get a feel for
their personality. You also geta feel for their results and for
(09:16):
what they think looks good,because if you're following a
surgeon's social media accounts,and you see a bunch of people
who look kind of weird andcrazy, whether that's their
office staff, whether that'sthem, whether that's the the
before and after photos that goup on their on their social
feed, you know kind of what theythink looks good, and if you
(09:39):
don't like what They think looksgood, or you don't like their
personality on social media,chances are probably not going
to be a good fit for you. So youcan use social media, really, as
a kind of interview from yourcouch of your potential surgeon,
or surgeons photos are anotherthing that's that's really.
(10:00):
Important to look at. We touchedon this just a minute ago. If
you see a bunch of photos fromyour surgeon and you don't like
the way they look, you know, sayyou're interested in a breast
augmentation or a rhinoplasty,and you know, the surgeon's
noses are really pointy andsharp and Angular, and you're
(10:20):
not looking for that look. Youprobably ought to look for
somebody whose results are morelike what you're looking for.
There is a lot of deception thatgoes on, whether it's either
over intended or kind ofunintended. And just looking for
social media content that youhave to look at when you are
evaluating surgeons, before andafter pictures you see, you will
(10:43):
see a lot on the internet ofpatients before pictures, which
are taken in a very sterileoffice setting, with the lights
that are, that are, you know,like we are here in the studio,
kind of all focused. There's noshadows. Patients are without
makeup. Their hair is pulledback. They don't necessarily
(11:05):
look super flattering in thebefore pictures, and then their
after photos are some kind ofselfie that they've taken in
their car when they're in a fullface of makeup, getting ready to
go out for the evening injewelry and in a nice blouse,
you can't really make an applesto apples comparison there. You
(11:26):
really need to have standardizedphotos to be able to adequately
compare a good before and afterthe selfie in the car that's
taken sent in as the afterphoto. Maybe a great picture,
but you don't know what thatperson looks like under those
same sterile lights in theoffice. So that's one of those
(11:47):
tricks that we, you know, inthis field, will use, usually
unintentionally, to try and showoff our work. So make sure that
the lighting the poses arestandard. The other thing that
you have to look for, even inoffice photos, is, again,
(12:11):
lighting. Because if you'relooking and this is really more
for facial pictures than it isfor breast and body photos, is
if the lighting is different inthose pictures, you know, one
picture is taken in the in thebefore, under just standard
fluorescent lights, where you'vegot a lot of shadows, it puts
(12:32):
shadows under people's eyes, putshadows under their nose and
chin, and makes them look kindof tired and haggard, and then
their after photo is in front ofstudio lighting that doesn't
have any shadows. You can makethe same person look like almost
two different people just bychanging the lighting. So make
(12:54):
sure. Pay attention to theshadows under the eyes. Pay
attention to the to the lightingin the pictures to make sure
that you're again getting thatapples to apples, comparison of
your before and after pictures.
Another thing to look at whenyou're evaluating a surgeon is
reviews. And this is one ofthose things that you know, if
(13:14):
there was deception in thebefore and after pictures. There
is, there is almost intentionaldeception in reviews from the
very beginning when reviewsonline, reviews started
happening. This has been an areathat has been scammed almost
(13:37):
from the very beginning. Mybrother, for a little while,
worked in internet marketing andwas doing some work for not a
plastic surgeon in another town,and was talking about all of the
different ways that fake reviewswere generated for competitors
(13:58):
of his company, and how he wasso frustrated that, you know,
people were getting paid tocreate fake accounts, to write
fake reviews. And, you know,fortunately, with this was pre
Google. Google has been reallygood about cracking down on a
lot of that, but a lot of thereview sites that aren't the
Googles, that aren't theFacebooks that aren't like a
(14:22):
company that that we use calledreal patient ratings, and I'll
talk about them in just asecond. Are really paid
marketing sites. You're notpaying for them, but the surgeon
who's generating the reviews isthere are a couple of very well
(14:44):
known review sites, Yelpthat are really bad about
almost extorting practices tohighlight their reviews. If you
pay to be kind of a preferredprovider on some of these review
(15:05):
sites, and they willintentionally, you know, boost
your reviews and throttle backyour competitors who aren't
paying for those services. Andso, you know, sites like real
self, which is a plastic surgeryrating site, again, Yelp, does
(15:25):
this? You have to be carefulabout who shows up there and who
doesn't. The best review sitesare review sites that allow
anybody to review them, but theyhave to be a verified user, so
Google being a good one, butwith with a lot of these, you
have no idea whether the personwho's writing the review is
(15:46):
actually even a patient of thepractice. That's why we we use a
company out of California calledreal patient ratings, who only
uses reviews from verifiedpatients in the practice and
post those reviews anonymously,unless the patient allows them
(16:07):
their name to be used and is ais a really good source of good
information about what happenswithin a Practice. There are
certain things to look for withreviews that I think are you
really need to focus on, namely,patient results and patients
(16:31):
experience. You know, peoplewill write reviews about
practices. You know, they had towait too long in the waiting
room the the receptionist washaving about having a bad day.
You know, the nurse had, youknow, food on her, on her shirt
from lunch. I mean, littlethings that, while they're
(16:54):
marginally important, don'treally tell you about the
experience and the results thatpatients are getting in surgery,
but affect their reviewsnonetheless. So as you're
looking at reviews, payattention to the good ones. Also
look at the bad ones. Look atthe look at the low star, the
(17:14):
one star. Reviews in and readwhat people are writing. Is it
written in intelligible English?
You know, that's, that's a,that's a big tip off. You know,
if you run on sentences, noperiods, you know, sounds like a
drunken rant, it might just be adrunken rant, but read those for
content, and let that helpinform your decision. So reviews
(17:36):
are important, but theyshouldn't be the deciding factor
in a decision on who to choosethe best plastic who to choose
plastic surgeon for you. Wecan't talk about cosmetic
surgery without talking aboutprice and I am, and always have
been, a big proponent for pricetransparency. You can look at my
(17:57):
website, call my office, and youcan get somebody to give you a
ballpark estimate of what acertain procedure or combination
of procedures will cost beforeyou even come in the door. In a
perfect world, cost and pricewouldn't matter. We don't,
(18:18):
obviously don't live in aperfect world, and it does
matter. And so you know you haveto be you know if you're looking
for cosmetic surgery, it has tobe something that is financially
feasible for you. And so knowinga price before you even walk in
the office, before you evenschedule that consultation, is
important. There are optionsavailable out there for patients
(18:44):
who say, Well, you know, Ireally want this. I could
probably make it work. There arefinancing options out there.
There's Care Credit. There's acompany called Cherry, which is,
which is another one, a patientphi. There's all sorts of places
where you can go and you canactually get pre approved for
how much ever your procedurecosts again before you even walk
(19:06):
in the door. And kind of lastthing I'll say about price is
that no two surgeons are thesame. You are paying for an
outcome, you're also paying foran experience. You're paying for
attention, you're paying forcaring. You're paying for
(19:29):
someone who is going to takecare of you no matter what
happens. And that is somethingthat I think kind of leads us
to, you know, the last partabout this is complications. No
discussion of plastic surgery isreally complete without talking
about possible complications.
(19:51):
Again, in an ideal world,complications in cosmetic
surgery and elective surgerythat you don't need, that you
want, wouldn't happen, but theydo. Do, and you have to be okay
with the fact that you may beone of the unlucky patients that
has a complication from surgery,and you want somebody who's
(20:14):
going to be there with you tohelp make it right, because it
sucks for you. It also sucks foryour surgeon. You know, nobody
wants to have complications, butwe we do, and we deal with them.
And you want to make sure thatthat person is going to stick
with you and have a realdiscussion with you about those
complications before theyhappen, so that you at least if
(20:34):
something does happen, you knowthat they're in it with you, and
you know that it's somethingthat everybody's trying to avoid
on the front end. In wrappingthis up, I think choosing a
cosmetic surgeon is a plasticsurgeon is a very personal
decision. You know, who's theperson who's exactly right for
(20:55):
your friend who got a greatresult may not be the right
person for you, for personality,reasons, for Office reasons, for
any number of the things that wetalked about. And so do your
research, do your homework, andyou know, use what we've talked
about today as kind of a guideon how to choose the best person
(21:15):
for you. And I put together akind of a checklist that has all
of this stuff in it. You feelfree to to email. We can we can
email you a copy. You candownload it. We'll get that up
here associated with a show. Soyou can print that out. Take it
with you. Use it for eachsurgeon that you're evaluating
(21:37):
to help you choose the personthat's right for you. So I hope
you found this interesting,entertaining and informative. If
you have any questions, pleasefeel free shoot me an email info
at Dr Jason hall.com, you can DMme at Dr Jason Hall, thanks for
listening. We'll see you on thenext show. You.
If you're thinking about having plastic
(00:01):
surgery, do not choose a surgeonuntil you listen to this.
If you spend any time onInstagram or social media in
general, and you have even apassing interest in plastic
(00:22):
surgery, chances are you've seenevery plastic surgeon in your
town, and then plastic surgeonsin other towns pop up in your in
your social media feed. There isa ton of marketing in the
cosmetic space, in the plasticsurgery space, and it makes it
if you don't know somebody, itmakes it really difficult to
choose a plastic surgeon in thisepisode of the Trillium show,
(00:44):
what I'm going to do is breakdown things to look for. Break
down things to look out for, andhelp you kind of make the best
decision you can when it comesto how to select a plastic
surgeon. So welcome to theTrillium Show. I'm your host. Dr
Jason Hall, board certifiedplastic surgeon, author of the
new book, The Art of aging. Youcan see here, you can click the
(01:07):
link in the show notes, go toAmazon, get a copy shipped to
you today. So plastic surgery,medicine in general, used to be
one of these things that peoplekind of talked about, but nobody
advertised in the 90s. All ofthat changed, and you started
seeing billboards. You startedseeing plastic surgeons on TV.
And now plastic surgeryadvertising is absolutely
(01:30):
everywhere, magazines, internet,social media, and that makes it
really hard for people who aretrying to find the best plastic
surgeon for whatever procedureit is that they're interested
in, makes it really difficult toidentify who that person is.
Everybody has something on theirwebsite or on their social media
(01:51):
about how they're the best andyou know, how do you cut through
the noise? So what we're goingto do today is we're going to
talk about things to look outfor and talk about things to
look at, to not to watch forwhen you're looking for a
plastic surgeon, I think thefirst thing is look in the
mirror. The most importantthing, the way to get the best
(02:14):
result, is to understand yourown goals. What are you looking
to accomplish? And are youlooking to accomplish this for
you, or are you looking toaccomplish this for someone
else? You'd be surprised thenumber of people who come in to
see plastic surgeons who arethere because someone else has
(02:35):
pointed out a feature that theythink needs to be changed or a
flaw that they see that theysay, Hey, you know, it's like
somebody telling you that youlook better as a blonde than a
brunette. If that's not yourchoice, you're never going to be
pleased with the result,because, unlike color in your
(02:56):
hair, once you have plasticsurgery, you can't go back. And
so before you even go down thatroad, I think it's really
important to take a look in themirror, assess the reasons why
you're doing this, and make surethat you're doing this because
it's something that you want todo, not something that somebody
else thinks would be good foryou. That's kind of an aside.
(03:19):
The credentialing thing is oneof the big aspects of choosing a
plastic surgeon that can bereally difficult. You know, in
the intro, I talk about beingboard certified, but I didn't
tell you what board it was. Somy board certification is the
American Board of PlasticSurgery. That is the board that
certifies plastic surgeons inthe United States, you can't
(03:42):
call yourself a plastic surgeonlegally without being board
certified by the American Boardof Plastic Surgery. I think even
backing up a step, you need tomake sure that your surgeon,
your cosmetic surgeon, plasticsurgeon, whatever you want to
call it, is actually a surgeon.
Because in the United States,you can do surgery without
(04:03):
actually having any trainingwhatsoever in surgery. If you
look at my diploma from medicalschool, if you look at my
medical license from Tennessee,Texas, South Carolina, places
that I've been licensed and arelicensed now, it says that I
have a license to practicemedicine and surgery. Your
(04:23):
family practitioner, his or herlicense, says the exact same
thing. So you have to be reallycareful that your cosmetic
surgeon is actually a surgeonfirst, and that means that they
went through a surgicalresidency program. There are
four, what we call corespecialties in cosmetic surgery.
(04:47):
Those four specialties areplastic surgery, facial plastic
surgery, so those, those areear, nose and throat and.
Surgeons who have doneadditional training in cosmetic
surgery of the face,oculoplastic surgeons, which are
ophthalmologists, so eyesurgeons who've done a full
(05:10):
residency in ophthalmology, solong word eye surgery, and then
did additional training incosmetic surgery of mostly
forehead and eyes and thendermatology, and they kind of
specialize in all things skin.
(05:33):
None of them get any surgicaltraining, so they are the only
one of the four cosmetic corecosmetic specialists that are
not trained in surgery, so theydon't operate, but they do skin
stuff and non surgical treatmentand lasers. So those are the
only four core cosmeticspecialties. You'll see all
(05:55):
sorts of other specialists thatare getting into the cosmetic
business because it's lucrative.
Just in our area, you've gotoral surgeons who are who are
dentists that went on to oraland maxillofacial surgical
training. You see emergency roomdoctors, you see family
practitioners, you seeobstetricians. And all of these
different specialists aregetting into the cosmetic field
(06:17):
because it's a lucrative field,and that's not to denigrate any
one of them, but you have to,you have to know that going into
this, because you know what mostof the non surgical specialists
do are kind of med spa things,injectables, lasers, you know,
non invasive body sculpting,Things like that. But if you see
(06:40):
one of these other specialistswho are offering cosmetic
surgical procedures, you kind ofneed to scratch your head. That
was a kind of a really quickoverview of the credentialing
behind it. The shortcut to knowif you your potential surgeon,
your surgical candidate.
(07:00):
Surgeon, candidate is an actualtrained surgeon, is to ask them
if they have hospital privilegesto perform the procedure that
you want or that you'reinterested in, because a surgeon
who is adequately trained, whois licensed to do the things
that you're interested in isgoing to have to have hospital
(07:23):
privileges to be able to dothose things. If they don't,
then, you know, they're, they'reprobably shouldn't be doing
those treatments. Nobodypublicizes that you have to ask.
You have to, you know, calltheir office and ask if they
have hospital credentials to dothese things, even those of us
you know, I do 99% of my surgeryin an outpatient surgery center,
(07:47):
I still have to have hospitalprivileges to be able to do
those same procedures in localhospitals around here, because
if, God forbid, we have acomplication that requires me to
go to the hospital and take careof a patient. It has to be a
procedure that I can do so thatI can fix the problem, otherwise
you're left to kind of,whoever's on call for the
(08:09):
hospital taking care of you inthe middle of the night or on a
weekend, and that's notsomething that anybody wants to
do. So that's a that's kind of aquick overview on the
credentialing process behindchoosing a plastic surgeon.
Second thing in that we kind oftalked a lot about this at the
beginning, is the social mediaaspect of it, and I will go on
(08:34):
record, I'm not shy about sayingwhen social media came out, I
was not a big fan, still not ahuge fan, of social media, but I
do see the utility. You'reprobably watching this on social
media right now, if you're notlistening to it in your car, on
the on a podcast, social mediais kind of a double edged sword.
(08:54):
There's a lot of marketing hypebehind it. You've got to know
that going into it, but it is agreat way for you to kind of
interview your potentialsurgeon, by seeing who they are
on social media before you go inthe office, you get a feel for
their personality. You also geta feel for their results and for
(09:16):
what they think looks good,because if you're following a
surgeon's social media accounts,and you see a bunch of people
who look kind of weird andcrazy, whether that's their
office staff, whether that'sthem, whether that's the the
before and after photos that goup on their on their social
feed, you know kind of what theythink looks good, and if you
(09:39):
don't like what They think looksgood, or you don't like their
personality on social media,chances are probably not going
to be a good fit for you. So youcan use social media, really, as
a kind of interview from yourcouch of your potential surgeon,
or surgeons photos are anotherthing that's that's really.
(10:00):
Important to look at. We touchedon this just a minute ago. If
you see a bunch of photos fromyour surgeon and you don't like
the way they look, you know, sayyou're interested in a breast
augmentation or a rhinoplasty,and you know, the surgeon's
noses are really pointy andsharp and Angular, and you're
(10:20):
not looking for that look. Youprobably ought to look for
somebody whose results are morelike what you're looking for.
There is a lot of deception thatgoes on, whether it's either
over intended or kind ofunintended. And just looking for
social media content that youhave to look at when you are
evaluating surgeons, before andafter pictures you see, you will
(10:43):
see a lot on the internet ofpatients before pictures, which
are taken in a very sterileoffice setting, with the lights
that are, that are, you know,like we are here in the studio,
kind of all focused. There's noshadows. Patients are without
makeup. Their hair is pulledback. They don't necessarily
(11:05):
look super flattering in thebefore pictures, and then their
after photos are some kind ofselfie that they've taken in
their car when they're in a fullface of makeup, getting ready to
go out for the evening injewelry and in a nice blouse,
you can't really make an applesto apples comparison there. You
(11:26):
really need to have standardizedphotos to be able to adequately
compare a good before and afterthe selfie in the car that's
taken sent in as the afterphoto. Maybe a great picture,
but you don't know what thatperson looks like under those
same sterile lights in theoffice. So that's one of those
(11:47):
tricks that we, you know, inthis field, will use, usually
unintentionally, to try and showoff our work. So make sure that
the lighting the poses arestandard. The other thing that
you have to look for, even inoffice photos, is, again,
(12:11):
lighting. Because if you'relooking and this is really more
for facial pictures than it isfor breast and body photos, is
if the lighting is different inthose pictures, you know, one
picture is taken in the in thebefore, under just standard
fluorescent lights, where you'vegot a lot of shadows, it puts
(12:32):
shadows under people's eyes, putshadows under their nose and
chin, and makes them look kindof tired and haggard, and then
their after photo is in front ofstudio lighting that doesn't
have any shadows. You can makethe same person look like almost
two different people just bychanging the lighting. So make
(12:54):
sure. Pay attention to theshadows under the eyes. Pay
attention to the to the lightingin the pictures to make sure
that you're again getting thatapples to apples, comparison of
your before and after pictures.
Another thing to look at whenyou're evaluating a surgeon is
reviews. And this is one ofthose things that you know, if
(13:14):
there was deception in thebefore and after pictures. There
is, there is almost intentionaldeception in reviews from the
very beginning when reviewsonline, reviews started
happening. This has been an areathat has been scammed almost
(13:37):
from the very beginning. Mybrother, for a little while,
worked in internet marketing andwas doing some work for not a
plastic surgeon in another town,and was talking about all of the
different ways that fake reviewswere generated for competitors
(13:58):
of his company, and how he wasso frustrated that, you know,
people were getting paid tocreate fake accounts, to write
fake reviews. And, you know,fortunately, with this was pre
Google. Google has been reallygood about cracking down on a
lot of that, but a lot of thereview sites that aren't the
Googles, that aren't theFacebooks that aren't like a
(14:22):
company that that we use calledreal patient ratings, and I'll
talk about them in just asecond. Are really paid
marketing sites. You're notpaying for them, but the surgeon
who's generating the reviews isthere are a couple of very well
(14:44):
known review sites, Yelpthat are really bad about
almost extorting practices tohighlight their reviews. If you
pay to be kind of a preferredprovider on some of these review
(15:05):
sites, and they willintentionally, you know, boost
your reviews and throttle backyour competitors who aren't
paying for those services. Andso, you know, sites like real
self, which is a plastic surgeryrating site, again, Yelp, does
(15:25):
this? You have to be carefulabout who shows up there and who
doesn't. The best review sitesare review sites that allow
anybody to review them, but theyhave to be a verified user, so
Google being a good one, butwith with a lot of these, you
have no idea whether the personwho's writing the review is
(15:46):
actually even a patient of thepractice. That's why we we use a
company out of California calledreal patient ratings, who only
uses reviews from verifiedpatients in the practice and
post those reviews anonymously,unless the patient allows them
(16:07):
their name to be used and is ais a really good source of good
information about what happenswithin a Practice. There are
certain things to look for withreviews that I think are you
really need to focus on, namely,patient results and patients
(16:31):
experience. You know, peoplewill write reviews about
practices. You know, they had towait too long in the waiting
room the the receptionist washaving about having a bad day.
You know, the nurse had, youknow, food on her, on her shirt
from lunch. I mean, littlethings that, while they're
(16:54):
marginally important, don'treally tell you about the
experience and the results thatpatients are getting in surgery,
but affect their reviewsnonetheless. So as you're
looking at reviews, payattention to the good ones. Also
look at the bad ones. Look atthe look at the low star, the
(17:14):
one star. Reviews in and readwhat people are writing. Is it
written in intelligible English?
You know, that's, that's a,that's a big tip off. You know,
if you run on sentences, noperiods, you know, sounds like a
drunken rant, it might just be adrunken rant, but read those for
content, and let that helpinform your decision. So reviews
(17:36):
are important, but theyshouldn't be the deciding factor
in a decision on who to choosethe best plastic who to choose
plastic surgeon for you. Wecan't talk about cosmetic
surgery without talking aboutprice and I am, and always have
been, a big proponent for pricetransparency. You can look at my
(17:57):
website, call my office, and youcan get somebody to give you a
ballpark estimate of what acertain procedure or combination
of procedures will cost beforeyou even come in the door. In a
perfect world, cost and pricewouldn't matter. We don't,
(18:18):
obviously don't live in aperfect world, and it does
matter. And so you know you haveto be you know if you're looking
for cosmetic surgery, it has tobe something that is financially
feasible for you. And so knowinga price before you even walk in
the office, before you evenschedule that consultation, is
important. There are optionsavailable out there for patients
(18:44):
who say, Well, you know, Ireally want this. I could
probably make it work. There arefinancing options out there.
There's Care Credit. There's acompany called Cherry, which is,
which is another one, a patientphi. There's all sorts of places
where you can go and you canactually get pre approved for
how much ever your procedurecosts again before you even walk
(19:06):
in the door. And kind of lastthing I'll say about price is
that no two surgeons are thesame. You are paying for an
outcome, you're also paying foran experience. You're paying for
attention, you're paying forcaring. You're paying for
(19:29):
someone who is going to takecare of you no matter what
happens. And that is somethingthat I think kind of leads us
to, you know, the last partabout this is complications. No
discussion of plastic surgery isreally complete without talking
about possible complications.
(19:51):
Again, in an ideal world,complications in cosmetic
surgery and elective surgerythat you don't need, that you
want, wouldn't happen, but theydo. Do, and you have to be okay
with the fact that you may beone of the unlucky patients that
has a complication from surgery,and you want somebody who's
(20:14):
going to be there with you tohelp make it right, because it
sucks for you. It also sucks foryour surgeon. You know, nobody
wants to have complications, butwe we do, and we deal with them.
And you want to make sure thatthat person is going to stick
with you and have a realdiscussion with you about those
complications before theyhappen, so that you at least if
(20:34):
something does happen, you knowthat they're in it with you, and
you know that it's somethingthat everybody's trying to avoid
on the front end. In wrappingthis up, I think choosing a
cosmetic surgeon is a plasticsurgeon is a very personal
decision. You know, who's theperson who's exactly right for
(20:55):
your friend who got a greatresult may not be the right
person for you, for personality,reasons, for Office reasons, for
any number of the things that wetalked about. And so do your
research, do your homework, andyou know, use what we've talked
about today as kind of a guideon how to choose the best person
(21:15):
for you. And I put together akind of a checklist that has all
of this stuff in it. You feelfree to to email. We can we can
email you a copy. You candownload it. We'll get that up
here associated with a show. Soyou can print that out. Take it
with you. Use it for eachsurgeon that you're evaluating
(21:37):
to help you choose the personthat's right for you. So I hope
you found this interesting,entertaining and informative. If
you have any questions, pleasefeel free shoot me an email info
at Dr Jason hall.com, you can DMme at Dr Jason Hall, thanks for
listening. We'll see you on thenext show. You.
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