Is your doctor’s office-based operating room accredited?

If you’re in the market for cosmetic surgery, you may notice lots of doctors now perform their cosmetic procedures in their office. But that doesn’t mean that every office based operating room is created equal! You want to be sure that your doctor’s office based operating room has accreditation. Believe it or not, there’s no law requiring accreditation but I’m going to explain why it’s important, law or no law.

Office-based Operating Room Accreditation

The benefits may seem obvious. Having surgery in an office based operating room provides a personalized, VIP experience. True. But as this post and this post explain, there’s also evidence that going to a surgeon that has the same staff everyday in their own operating can actually lead to better outcomes and lower postop complications.

Additionally, there’s the issue of accreditation. Having an accredited office-based operating room means that you adhere to certain standards. Not the minimum standards but standards that prepare for most circumstances and scenarios. You see, it’s not how your doctor handles expected situations that make for a better experience. It’s the unexpected situations. Going through an accreditation process forces your facility or office to think about those unexpected situations and prepare for them.

Need an example? Yesterday, a major transformer blew out in San Francisco and 600,000 people were without power from 9:30am to 3:15pm. We were in the operating room performing liposuction when the power went out. However, it didn’t matter. Because we have an accredited operating room, we are required to have backup power in the OR. So the anesthesia machine and monitors continued to work unabated. We completed our surgery without any issues.

Consider if you were the patient. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable knowing your life was not at risk during that power outage?! Check out the video below to see what our day was like.