SoYoung Releases Guide to Finding Trusted Aesthetic Doctors Amid Severe Geographic Imbalance in Medical Aesthetics Resources

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Recently, SoYoung interviewed dozens of authoritative doctors from public hospitals and private institutions, and more than one doctor cited this quote by Dickens.

On one hand, 100% of the surveyed physicians stated that they are engaged in their ideal profession—indeed, it could not be more ideal. The notion that “the art of medicine is equivalent to art” is well exemplified in the field of medical aesthetics. Prestigious physicians typically work six days a week, with surgeries commonly scheduled on their usual days off to accommodate patients’ availability. Outside the operating room, they pursue photography, fine arts, and music in their leisure time, as plastic surgeons, often referred to as “living sculptors,” strive to avoid being perceived as vulgar or mundane. This is a high-income, highly educated demographic that appears ageless.

On the other hand, they also face troubles and even profound ethical dilemmas. Over the past five years, following a period of explosive growth, medical aesthetic consumption in China has entered the public mainstream. Some consumers view cosmetic injections merely as a beauty treatment, while some unscrupulous physicians perform procedures beyond their scope of practice for profit. There are even illegal practitioners who, after only a few days of training, dare to wield a scalpel. In response to these chaotic practices, authoritative physicians have urgently cautioned, “We must not act with such recklessness. Beyond technical skills and financial gain, there are greater humanistic and ethical imperatives to uphold.”

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that on December 19, 2018, So-Young, a leading global internet-based medical aesthetics platform, officially released an educational infographic article titled “How Can Consumers Find Reliable Medical Aesthetics Practitioners?” Below are some noteworthy highlights.

SoYoung extracted physician data from 351 cities. Among them, the top 10 cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Changsha, Hangzhou, and Zhengzhou—accounted for 53.7% of all aesthetic medicine physicians. Thus, 2.8% of the cities held 53.7% of the aesthetic medicine physician resources. The remaining 341 cities collectively accounted for 46.3% of the aesthetic medicine physicians.

On the one hand, medical resources are unevenly distributed and in short supply. On the other hand, consumer demand is robust. According to Deloitte’s 2018 “Analysis of China’s Medical Aesthetics O2O Market,” the annual growth rate of China’s medical aesthetics market exceeds 20%, with millions of young people initiating medical aesthetic consumption each year. This has led to the proliferation of black markets and non-compliant services.

In China’s current medical aesthetics market, hundreds of thousands of individuals perform aesthetic procedures, yet only tens of thousands are licensed physicians, with fewer than 10,000 possessing extensive experience.

A typical setting for non-compliant practices is beauty salons and micro-aesthetic studios, where common procedures include semi-permanent makeup (cosmetic tattooing), photoelectric treatments, and injectables. A Baidu search for “plastic surgery training” yields numerous advertisements for micro-aesthetic training programs. Among the results are reports highlighting such alarming keywords as “certification in three days” and “blindness caused by injections.”

SoYoung reminds you: First, Chinese regulations stipulate that all medical aesthetic procedures must be performed at licensed medical aesthetic institutions by qualified physicians. Beauty salons and micro-procedure studios offering medical aesthetic services are prone to non-compliant practices.

Second, a highly skilled aesthetic medicine physician typically undergoes more than 10 years of professional training, including academic education, hospital internships, accumulation of clinical experience, and refinement through lessons learned from failures. Such expertise cannot be acquired through mere days or even months of training.

Third, 90% of adverse events stem from the “three illegals”: unlicensed institutions, unqualified practitioners, and unapproved drugs and medical devices. The risks associated with injections are higher than those of surgical procedures and should not be taken lightly.

Technical expertise and experience are not written on one’s face; how can you identify experienced, board-certified physicians in the market?

SoYoung’s latest infographic presents a five-step method:

Step 1: Verify the "Physician's Practice Certificate." Physicians holding this certificate are what we commonly refer to as licensed practitioners. It signifies that they have undergone more than five years of training at accredited medical institutions and have completed at least one year of clinical practice in a hospital. How can you verify this? The physician search feature on the SoYoung app is integrated with the verification system of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, allowing you to check a physician's credentials with a single click.

Step 2: Evaluate the physician’s specialties and experience. As medical aesthetics consumption becomes more mainstream and mature, physicians’ professional specializations are becoming increasingly refined, with distinct focus areas such as hair transplantation, liposuction, wrinkle reduction, and energy-based devices (laser and light therapies).

According to Chinese policy, obtaining the "Certificate of Qualification for Attending Physicians in Medical Aesthetics" generally follows a registration-based system. The required experience varies by specialty: six years for surgical procedures, five years for dentistry, and three years for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and cosmetic dermatology. What does six years of accumulated surgical experience entail? For instance, a liposuction surgeon must remove over 500 kilograms of fat, while a facelift surgeon must spend more than 1,000 hours at the operating table. This process represents a dual cultivation of both physical endurance and mental acuity.

Step 3: Review consumer feedback to identify aesthetically skilled and well-regarded physicians. Medical aesthetics is not only a medical practice but also an art form. Physicians who are certified, specialized, and experienced do not necessarily deliver aesthetically pleasing outcomes. Consumer reviews provide the most objective assessment of aesthetic results. Currently, the SoYoung app has accumulated 3.8 million patient-authored cosmetic surgery diaries, covering 95% of licensed medical aesthetic practitioners in China and authentically reflecting their professional capabilities.

Step 4: Visit the institutions for individual in-person consultations. There is a professional point that is often overlooked by many consumers: Level 4 surgical procedures, such as zygomatic reduction and correction of mandibular angle hypertrophy, can only be performed in specialized tertiary hospitals. Consumers with more specific needs may refer to the original document of the "Catalogue for Hierarchical Management of Medical Aesthetic Procedures" issued by the General Office of the Ministry of Health.

Step 5: Place online orders and schedule appointments; purchase insurance to be prepared for any eventuality.

Finally, So-Young emphasizes that it takes hundreds of exams and thousands of surgeries to forge a reliable aesthetic medicine physician. Therefore, when choosing an aesthetic medicine physician, consumers should not seek bargain prices; the service fees of competent physicians will not be excessively low. However, one should not assume that high prices guarantee safety. It is worth noting that exorbitantly priced procedures occur every year, such as masseter reduction injections costing RMB 160,000 or double eyelid surgery priced at RMB 240,000. These procedures are often performed not by renowned key opinion leader (KOL) physicians, but by doctors who are excessively marketed by unscrupulous institutions and whose credentials cannot withstand scrutiny. So-Young stresses that standardized physicians typically offer standardized pricing, which is neither abnormally high nor unduly low.

In short, information symmetry and rational judgment are the key to achieving beauty safely. Below is the full illustrated report: