Core doctors—plastic surgeons, facial plastic surgeons, oculoplastic surgeons, and cosmetic dermatologists—seem to be uniquely well suited to capitalize on the booming medical aesthetic industry. As physicians, they are allowed to own medical spas, and ideally, they would not only profit from the medical spas themselves, but also use them to direct business to their surgical practices. After all, medical spas tend to do a lot of the same things these core doctors do, albeit non-invasively, and it does stand to reason that if patients go to a medical spa looking for a Botox injection, they might eventually want a nose job or a face-lift. In that case, the core doctor who owns the medical spa might be uniquely positioned to offer his or her services.

However, despite the apparent synergy between these two types of businesses, many of the core doctors who treat medical spas as extensions of their surgical practices end up very disappointed in the actual results. I chat with core doctors all the time, and those who have opened medical spas with the idea of using them primarily as feeders for their practices tend to view them as poor investments. Their medical spas tend to flounder, and the amount of business they drive to their surgical practices is disappointing.
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