The government is planning to tighten regulations on cosmetic surgery, including ranking the safety risks of cosmetic procedures and setting qualification standards for the personnel that can perform them, Minister of Health and Welfare (MOHW) Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said on Sunday.
The minister’s comments, made on the sidelines of the Taiwan Healthcare Reform Foundation’s 25th anniversary event in Taipei, come after a man died on Wednesday last week at a clinic in Taipei while under anesthesia after undergoing penis enlargement surgery.
The clinic owner and surgeon was found to have been involved in several previous medical disputes and had been fined, but had changed his name twice and the clinic’s name a few times.
Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times
In the wake of several major incidents or deaths involving cosmetic surgery in the past few years, the ministry would seek to amend the Regulations Governing the Application of Specific Medical Examination Techniques and Medical Devices (特定醫療技術檢查檢驗醫療儀器施行或使用管理辦法), Shih said.
The amendments would target four main areas, the first of which is setting doctors’ qualifications for performing certain procedures according to their safety risks, he said.
Even low-risk procedures, such as aesthetic injections or laser treatments, should be performed by doctors that have at least finished their two-year postgraduate clinical training, and should not be performed by graduates that have only finished their internships, he added.
“We do not wish to see the ‘chokubi’ phenomenon [in Taiwan], as it is not good for people or the quality of healthcare, and distorts the nature of medical treatment,” he said.
Chokubi is a term used in Japan to describe the trend of young doctors joining private cosmetic clinics immediately after medical school.
Regarding high-risk procedures, the amended regulations would require that surgeons finish certain specialty training, Shih said.
Second, investigations and supervisory inquiries should be launched after a major incident, and the clinic must be ordered to improve within a given time, he said, adding that the clinics should also receive the Joint Commission of Taiwan’s Aesthetic Medicine Quality Certification for four years.
Third, the names of cosmetic clinics that have breached medical regulations and been suspended for more than three months should be publicized along with the doctors’ license numbers, to ensure people can identify them even if they change their name or their clinic’s name, Shih said.
Last, medical treatment for injuries caused by cosmetic procedures should not be covered by the National Health Insurance, as it is unfair to use state resources on such injuries, and the cosmetic clinic should be responsible for paying the medical cost, he said.
The ministry plans to announce the draft amendments to the act next month, and following a 60-day public comment period, the amended regulations could take effect by the end of the year or early next year, he said.
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