Bill would punish deadly plastic surgery clinics
In response to deaths in Florida’s cosmetic surgery centers, a top state lawmaker proposed legislation that would allow the state to punish clinics for the first time and ban troubled doctors from working in the facilities.
State regulators could fine and shut down clinics that have operated for decades with virtually no regulatory oversight while patients were left with critical injuries.
The bill filed Tuesday came days after an investigation by USA TODAY and the Naples Daily News showed eight women died after procedures in the same Miami-area plastic surgery business where doctors with little specialized training performed up to eight surgeries a day in what patient advocates called a factory assembly line.
Despite the deaths and injuries – including two women hospitalized after their intestines were perforated – the state allowed the facilities to keep operating.
“It’s a national problem because you’ve got people from all over the country (coming to Florida) under the assumption that they will be safe,” said state Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami, the chamber’s deputy majority leader, who sponsors the bill.
Flores, whose district includes the plasticsurgery business investigated by USA TODAY, said the fatal surgeries are “heartbreaking cases of people with young families, and the last thing they expected was to come here and die.”
The investigation found Jolie Plastic Surgery is among more than a dozen high-volume clinics in Florida owned by investors and driven by discount prices and social-media advertising that draw thousands of women each year from across the country.
The state health department said it has never been able to close the facilities when patients die or are injured, but the proposal would give the state the power to revoke a clinic’s registration.
The bill would require that only doctors could own the facilities, and if a clinic was shut down, the physician who owned the center would not be able to run another for at least five years.
Patients flock to Miami-area facilities for one of the fastest-growing – and most dangerous – procedures in plastic surgery: the Brazilian butt lift.
Popularized in Miami, the procedures have resulted in numerous deaths in the past five years in Florida, including some of the fatalities examined by USA TODAY.