How to Choose the Right Medical Spa

Matthew Pruitt is the owner of NuVision, a boutique medical spa in Manhattan that offers a range of laser-based procedures including LASIK, BOTOX and skin rejuvenation. Here he explains how to select a medical spa that meets your individual needs.

First and foremost, we all work hard for our money these days. When folks are looking for solutions to their cosmetic issues, they want something that they can rest assured is going to work, not just empty promises that don’t deliver.

When a business advertises that they are a medical spa, people just assume that there is going to be a doctor there and that their care is going to be provided by a medical physician. Unfortunately, this just isn’t the cases with many of these spas. And so you, as a patient, want to make sure that the procedure you are asking for is being supervised by a doctor or performed by a doctor.

You are also going to want to make sure that the doctor is skilled and up to date on all of the latest technologies because technology changes so much in this industry. Every year, we at NuVision go to see what the new technologies are. Many of these latest treatments promise to do a variety of great, new, and different things. As a patient, however, you really need to know that you are going to a medical spa practice that has a good reputation, has been in practice for a number of years, a really does their homework to identify the type of technologies that are appropriate for their patients. Furthermore, you will want to find a practice that stands behind the results, like we do at NuVision.

For instance, if I were to sit here and say that every patient who comes into NuVision asking for our services got a perfect result of what they wanted every single time, well that would not be true. There are some patients who require just a bit of extra attention to get the results that they are looking for.

A perfect example of this is a 19-year-old patient who came in to our office for acne treatment recently. He had tried all of the over-the-counter-creams and soaps, and went to a dermatologist who recommended that he use (the no-longer sold) Accutane—all with minimal success. When he came to us, we started with an Isolaz package. Usually that lasts for five treatments. By the end of the five treatments, the patient was beginning to see signs of improvement. However, the improvement was not what he had anticipated—or what we had anticipated—and so we chose to continued to do additional treatments on this patient free of charge until we got to a point where we felt like we had achieved a result that he was happy with.

Stories like that are really what you want when you go to a medical spa center. You want a practice that is going to offer diverse services, new technologies, one that is staffed by board-certified physicians, and one that is going to adjust its services until the client achieves the results that were promised, because that is a practice that is really standing behind what it says and what its outcomes are going to be.

The information in the article is not intended to substitute for the medical expertise and advice of your healthcare provider. We encourage you to discuss any decisions about treatment or care with an appropriate healthcare provider.