| Legal & Liability Issues of a Medical Spa WHAT IS A MEDICAL SPA? From the National Coalition of Esthetic & Related Associations Medical Spa Definition A medical spa is a facility that operates under the full-time, on-site supervision of a licensed health care professional. The facility operates within the scope of practice of its staff and offers traditional, complementary and alternative health practices and treatments in a spa-like setting. Practitioners working within a medical spa will be governed by their appropriate licensing board, if licensure is required. For more information on the NCEA and related industry positions go online to www.ncea.tv Download the PDF 
"Wellness" may be the future of medi-spas
By MSP Staff | Published 01/1/2006 | Business Trends , MedSpa Marketing | Rating:
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View all articles by MSP Staff "Wellness" may be the future of medi-spas
Helen Welling is terrified of horses.
But, trying to cope with the death of a beloved daughter who loved them, she is in the Miraval spa's dusty corral, working up the courage to approach a mare named Whitney. Under the sharp eye of a cowboy psychotherapist, she's trying to overcome her fear and feel closer to Katie, who died in an April fire at age 21.
Here at Miraval, Life in Balance in the saguaro cactus-dotted Sonoran Desert outside Tucson, there's more than massage on the menu.
Guests at the high-rated destination spa can confront anxiety and unproductive personal behavior patterns via the Equine Experience -- interacting with a horse on foot. It's nothing to snort at: Oprah Winfrey and AOL co-founder Steve Case have tried it.
Visitors also can try to release embedded memories of past trauma with a pioneering treatment by a therapist who has treated survivors of the World Trade Center attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing.
Ten-year-old Miraval has always been known for cutting-edge mind-body therapies. Now, like a growing number of destination spas -- or "wellness resorts," as some prefer to be called -- it's taking its restorative mission further.
Under the stewardship of Case, who bought a majority share of the luxury spa last year after a stay here, Miraval will be adding a wellness center offering alternative and Western medical treatments and is planning to take its mission to a wider audience.
In January, noted physician Andrew Weil, author of the best seller Healthy Aging, leads his first Miraval workshop on optimal aging, emphasizing preventive health measures and stress-busting strategies. Weil, director of integrative medicine at the University of Arizona at Tucson and recently named director of integrative health and healing at Miraval, will help develop programs to be offered here and later at centers in major U.S. cities.
Programs melding traditional medicine and alternative therapies treat mind, body and spirit and promote longevity, Weil says. "We're just at the beginning. I've long been interested in developing a hybrid between a spa and a clinic. My hope is that this can be replicated more inexpensively elsewhere."
Miraval, which runs $450 and up daily, is not alone in its mission.
Wellness is a buzzword in the travel industry these days, meaning anything from a massage-laced package tour to cutting-edge treatments at a serious health retreat.
The International Spa Association says the medical-spa niche grew faster than any segment of the U.S. spa industry from 2002 to 2004 -- by 109%, vs. 26% for the U.S. spa industry as a whole. It says 471 U.S. spas offered medical treatments in 2004, ranging from day spas that sell Botox shots to destination resorts offering diagnosis and treatment by board-certified physicians.
The field grows so fast it's hard to keep count: The International Medical Spa Association puts the number of such spas at over 1,000.
Canyon Ranch, a wellness resort headquartered in Tucson and known as the powerhouse U.S. spa in the medical field, has long offered doctor-supervised treatments with a preventive-medicine twist. "Now other people are doing what we've done for two decades, and we're glad about that," says Canyon Ranch's Jan McIntire.
Wellness vacations, she says, "are a great time to look at your health when you can really absorb (information) and practice what you learn and take it home with you."
Guests at its Tucson and Lenox, Mass., locations can get checkups and diagnoses, and see acupuncturists, counselors and chiropractors. Canyon Ranch ventures include developing residential communities with spa and medical services in Tucson and Miami Beach.
A new partnership with Ohio's famed Cleveland Clinic will offer "Optimal Health" programs to Canyon Ranch-goers, as well as access to top specialists.
Wellness getaways aligned with big names in health and medicine include the Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa near Miami and Dallas' Cooper Wellness Center.
In the fall, a grocery star enters the medi-spa arena.
Dole Food plans to open a wellness center, spa and 270-room luxury hotel on 20 acres next to its headquarters in Westlake Village, Calif. The complex, about 35 miles north of L.A., will have everything from spa services, nutrition programs and plastic-surgery recovery to a longevity test that measures a person's rate of DNA degradation.
Miraval may open another destination spa in the East. And, following in the path of Canyon Ranch and other retreats such as Utah's Red Mountain Spa, Miraval is selling villas that offer buyers priority access to treatments and programs.
More and more, people seek self-awareness and healing, says Harley Mayersohn, Miraval's vice president of branding and marketing. And they don't just want it on an episodic basis, such as an occasional spa vacation. Ground will be broken for villas in 2006.
He thinks those who've felt the benefits of a spa stay will embrace what he calls "a community based on the shared value of health."
Though physician Weil is on board and more medical programs are on the way, the Miraval focus will remain on self-awareness and mindful living, Mayersohn says. "We're not the Mayo Clinic."
Says Weil: "The focus will be more on who you are and what makes you tick." Then personalized treatment and educational plans will be developed.
"No Botox," Weil says. "No face lifts. We'll discuss it and maybe try to talk you out of it."
Indeed, Miraval made its name by helping heal the inside of a guest rather than polishing the exterior. And what happens in this desert oasis of gardens, waterfalls and low, Southwestern-style stucco buildings is life-changing, many rave.
"It's a place to slow down and look at yourself honestly," says Yvonne Leal of Glendale, Ariz., over lunch at Miraval's outdoor cafe. She just turned 40 and is at Miraval on this week in December to get away from her daily routine in a military job and to evaluate her life.
Across the complex, Brent Baum demonstrates his $190 "Holographic Memory Resolution " technique for releasing trauma.
The counselor/hypnotherapist takes patients' histories, then moves his hands up and down their necks and backs, searching for "hot spots" where trauma from painful experiences may be stored.
He asks when they first felt an ache in the spot, what event might have triggered it. Then he instructs them to give each ache a shape and color, to mentally envision adding a frame and giving that a color, and pushing the whole thing through the body.
Sounds woo-woo, he admits. But he says he's treated 11,000 people. "It works with any form of encoded stress," he says. "We don't know exactly how, but it does."
Meanwhile, guests who've been through the Equine Experience swear that an hour in the corral working with Wyatt Webb has taught them more than multiple sessions with a shrink.
Horses are "the quickest avenue to people's psyches," says Webb, an imposing 6-foot-3 therapist with cowboy hat, white beard and no-bull-allowed piercing green eyes.
This afternoon, he's helping New Yorker Pat Candaras and her sister Welling, grief lines etched on her face, work up the nerve to approach two mares and get the half-ton animals to lift a foot.
Horses respond to the energy you put out, he tells them. "It's OK to be afraid." But acknowledge the fear and work past it. Focus calmly on your intent.
Candaras is tentative, but Webb talks her through it.
After several shaky tries, Welling works up to putting her hands on Whitney's foreleg. Then a squeeze, and suddenly a hoof is in her hand.
Tears well. She turns toward Wyatt and to her sister, who has come with her to help her heal.
"Oh, thank you! Thank you!" Welling shouts. Then she pumps an arm skyward.
"This is for you. I did it, Katie!"
And any onlooker can tell that it's a victory for herself, too.
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More Men Getting the Needle Not so long ago, only ageing film stars would have had anything "done". . . and they certainly wouldn't admit it. Now the pressures to look youthful for longer, combined with greater affordability of procedures and the popularity of television shows such as Nip/Tuck and 10 Years Younger, are making cosmetic surgery as commonplace as nipping to the hairdressers, even for men. It seems men have noticed the results in their wives and female friends and are deciding to get a bit of the quick-fix action themselves, from face-lifts and nose-jobs to full-body lifts. The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) recorded 22,041 procedures carried out by its members last year; a rise of 34.6 per cent since 2004. The majority of cosmetic surgery is still carried out on women, but men now make up 14 per cent of clients, compared with just eight per cent in 2004.  prenotazione locanda TurinConsultant plastic surgeon and BAAPS member Adrian Richards is the surgical director at The Gatehouse Clinic in Northampton and also runs private clinics at Milton Keynes, High Wycombe and in Harley Street, London. Mr Richards said he had certainly noticed he was seeing more men locally, for all kinds of cosmetic surgery. "The number of people having plastic surgery in general has definitely gone up and there has been a great increase in the number of men within that," he said.
"In the last year alone, there has been nearly a 100 per cent rise.
Melanie Smith pictured treating Martin Smith, who had moles removed from his face
"There are a number of reasons why this could be. Maybe they are seeing their wives having it and decide they want something done too, or it is because they are under pressure in their jobs to look younger and better.
"Nose reshaping and having the ears set back are popular, and rejuvenation procedures to stave off the effects of ageing. "You only have to look at the range of men's cosmetics available now to see that it has become more acceptable generally for men to look after their appearance a bit more. It was considered not the done thing at all a few years ago." Mr Richards said most of the men who came to see him in Northampton were just ordinary people who wanted to improve their appearance. "They are normally quite successful and confident enough to have it done. A lot are having non-surgical treatments, like Botox," he said.
"The number one procedure has always been rhinoplasty (nose job] operations, but men are having more face lifts and things like that now.
"They say to me that they feel 20 inside but they see a 60-year-old looking back at them from the mirror." Mr Richards added that another factor in the increased popularity of cosmetic surgery for men was the fact that procedures like face lifts were looking more natural now. "We have moved away from the way they do it in America, where the skin is stretched really tight," he said. "Men also recover slightly quicker than women, because they have thicker skin, so they don't bruise as much, and they can hide any scars under facial hair like sideburns. "I had a guy in recently who was a builder and very macho. His wife had a facelift and he decided he wanted one too. But he did a very clever thing; he grew a beard to cover the scars, and then a few months later when he shaved it off everyone said how young he looked without it!
"A lot of people do still keep it very quiet. They will tell their partner, but still want to keep it from many of their friends." Working alongside Mr Richards at The Gatehouse Clinic is aesthetic nurse Melanie Smith, who specialises in facial augmentation and rejuvenation procedures, using Botox and dermal fillers to smooth wrinkles and plump out lips. Mrs Smith also runs her own business, Aqualine Medical Aesthetics, from her home in Clarke Close, Kettering.
Her background is in nursing and she has been performing non-surgical cosmetic treatments for about five years. She said non-surgical procedures were very popular among men, as few took longer than 20 minutes and the results lasted quite a long time.
In the last year, the number of non-surgical procedures ? such as Botox and skin-fillers ? has risen by 50 per cent. "When I originally started, five years ago, I don't think I saw a man in the first year," said Mrs Smith. "Occasionally, we would get some gay men having Botox or teeth-whitening, but not very many. "But then we noticed that wives would start to bring their husbands along and ask if there was anything we could do for them too. "There used to be a historical thing, that if a man was successful and amusing they could get away with everything, but these days they have to look youthful too." Mrs Smith said Botox was easily the most popular procedure she performed, followed by dermal fillers, to plump the skin, and the removal of facial thread veins and moles. "A lot of men have Botox on their forehead because it's a very noticeable area when they look in a mirror, especially if they have a receding hairline," she said. "It has become a lot more acceptable and, although we do see a lot of salesmen and GPs who are in the public eye, we also get people from all walks of life who just want to improve themselves.
"We also see single men or divorcees who are getting back out there and have to 'spruce' themselves up. "But men are in the same place now as women were about four or five years ago, where they don't talk about it much, whereas women talk about it like they are going to the hairdressers."
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