Cosmetic surgery in Australia to be monitored by enforcement unit to improve patient safety

Cosmetic surgery practitioners will be policed by a dedicated enforcement unit for the first time in Australia as part of an industry-wide crackdown by the national regulator.

The $1bn industry will undergo significant reform after an independent review highlighted cases of misconduct.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) and the Medical Board of Australia have agreed to implement the recommended changes to strengthen industry regulations and improve patient safety.

The inquiry, led by former Queensland health ombudsman Andrew Brown, revealed unsafe practices, misleading advertising and substandard marketing across the cosmetic surgery industry.

Universal minimum standards for education, training and qualifications in cosmetic surgery have been nonexistent in Australia.

Any medical practitioner can perform invasive cosmetic surgery without having undertaken appropriate training or having amassed sufficient supervised experience to reach an acceptable level of competency.

The Brown review found there was under-reporting of safety issues by registered health practitioners and employers.

Additionally, the state-by-state approach to facility regulation potentially exposed patients to undue risk.

Other recommendations included improving the way Ahpra and the medical board manage cosmetic surgery notifications and implementing a targeted education campaign to stop the under-reporting of safety issues.

Concerns around misleading advertising could be addressed by strengthening the advertising guidelines and taking stronger enforcement action against practitioners who breach the regulations, including on social media, the review found.

Ahpra welcomed all the recommendations and vowed to establish a cosmetic surgery enforcement unit to take action alongside the medical board. It will be backed by a $4.5m investment for extra resources.

The review formally began in January after a series of media reports highlighted patients who had been victims of disfigurements and other complications after undergoing cosmetic surgery.

This resulted in the Medical Board of Australia taking action against several practitioners.

Last year, Ahpra said it received 313 notifications of cosmetic surgeries that had a complication or injury in the three years up to June 2021.

Complaints were made against 183 practitioners following procedures ranging from tummy tucks, breast augmentation, facelifts, liposuction and eyelid surgery to non-invasive treatments like dermal fillers and anti-ageing injections.

Almost 40% of the ­complaints were against surgeons, which prompted calls for doctors carrying out cosmetic operations to be better regulated.

Doctors in Australia can call themselves cosmetic surgeons without being registered as a specialist surgeon or completing Australian Medical Council-accredited training.