Medical spas offer advanced services that go beyond simple wellness treats. Rather than just a massage or facial, you can get aesthetic services like Botox, plastic surgery, facelifts, and more. This immediately makes the requirements to open and manage a medical spa much higher and also far more rewarding.
With the drop in costs of procedures and equipment, medical spas can offer their services at far more accessible rates. This means more people can save up or use payment plans to cover the costs. You will help them finally move on from issues they are insecure about, help them glow, and most importantly, help them transform their confidence.
It can be very rewarding both personally and financially to either open or work in a medical spa.
Medical Professionals that Work in Medical Spas
You don’t need a medical license in order to open and start a medical spa, but you will need to hire the right people for the services that you want to offer. On the flip side, medical experts like NPs or physicians can open up their own medical spa as a specialist practice and offer a range of minimal to invasive treatments that improve a patient’s looks and confidence in ways that suit them best.
Aesthetic NP
An aesthetic or cosmetic nurse practitioner can either work autonomously, meaning they operate and manage many of the treatments offered by their medical spa, or they work within an existing medical spa alongside dermatologists or plastic surgeons. Aesthetic nurse practitioners can work in virtually every part of the spa, and in some states, can operate that spa independently and with full autonomy.
When working alongside surgeons or dermatologists, cosmetic NPs assist by providing care during surgery and after throughout the recovery process. To become an aesthetic NP, you need to be at least an RN and two years working in that specialty, and to then apply to the board. These are the minimum requirements. You will find that earning a nurse practitioner program at TWU would certify you as an FNP (the qualification given full autonomy) will help you open and operate the most comprehensive medical spa if this is the route you are taking.
Plastic Surgeon
Plastic surgeons are the ones who provide the aesthetic surgeries that help people feel like their best selves. From breast augmentation to body or facelifts, to minimally invasive procedures, to rhinoplasty, there are so many offerings you can provide, and it is a mixture of both science and an art. Building up your confidence and the level of your results takes time, and with that time, you will need to simultaneously be building up a client list.
Dermatologist
Dermatologists are skin doctors that provide diagnoses, prescriptions, and treatments for those with severe skin conditions. These skin conditions can range from skin cancer to eczema to acne. Dermatologists can and do often open up their own medical spa practice or work alongside other specialists in one clinic to bring in more clients and to create a better, more encompassing service list.
Other Specialists
With an increasing number of treatments available, there are more roles than ever before that work within the medical spa industry.
On top of these medical specialists, medical spas may hire receptionists, cleaners, and holistic care therapists that offer additional wellness services to round out their offerings. The scope of a medical spa can be massive, with treatments targeting the body and the spirit both common.
What is Included in a Medical Spa Facility
The facilities offered at the medical spa can also vary. At a minimum, you will need a location that has the space and the equipment to safely provide all of the services and treatments that you intend to offer. If you want to go even further, you will want to look into a location that has open rooms for classes and workshops and even relaxing spaces where massages can occur or where patients can wait while the treatment sets in.
Medical spas can operate independently or alongside a spa, and it depends entirely on the size and scope of your investment and ambition. Opening and operating a medical spa can be difficult, but there is massive interest in the services you could provide,
How to Design a Successful Medical Spa Business
Before you start bringing your spa dreams to the life, you will need to create a working business plan that outlines what you intend to do and how you intend to make it a success. This outline will need you to answer a few important questions:
- What are the rules and regulations in your state?
- Who is your competition and what are they doing?
- Who is your target audience, and how should you market to them?
- Where will you get your start-up funds?
- What services will you offer?
- How can you help your business stand out?
It can be very tempting to try to offer it all, but this is a good way to get lost in the crowd. You can always expand and increase the services and treatments that you offer as your medical spa grows and becomes more popular, but to start focussing on one key area (particularly if there isn’t a lot of local competition)
Except for non-invasive, minimal treatments, people also put a lot of emphasis on finding the right surgeon or medical professional for their surgery. Specializing means showcasing a truly refined skillset that others can rely on. As you grow, you can have fully realized service offerings and the right experts working on each service, or you yourself can slowly expand and gain certifications necessary to not only practice but also showcase your skills and capabilities to your customers, clients, and patients.
Having a solid idea, and researching with the above questions in mind, is an excellent way to get started on that business plan. You won’t be ready to get to launching your brand, however, until you start crunching the numbers.
Know how much it will cost to launch, from your training to the cost of hiring professionals, to rent, to the equipment, and so on. You will very likely need a loan but try to diversify where your money is coming in from.
For example, you may not be able to individually open up a practice, but if you partner with another healthcare expert who can bring both savings and their credit score to the table, then you can start to better finance your business with your partner rather than operating alone.
Understanding operating costs is also important, as it will help you learn and figure out how many clients and services you need to be booked per month to stay afloat. This is a good milestone to work towards in the beginning, as it will help keep you going while you grow and learn.
Hire or Put Together a Development Team
Medical spas can cover a lot of different areas, and a great way to see the entire project come together is with a development team. This team will help figure out how you will combine services or better set up your business with a specific goal in mind.
What development teams consider goes beyond the essentials. They delve deep into the customer experience and help you devise an environment and service list that offer your patients or clients everything they need to be wowed and want to come again for the future medical or spa-related needs.
Location and Your Medical Spa
Medical offices tend to be out of the way because patients are referred, and people are willing to travel out of their way to go to their doctor. Spas, on the other hand, are often found in luxurious spaces, where wellness and relaxation can occur.
A successful medical spa typically offers a bit of both. On the most luxurious end of the scale, you may want to rent a beautiful property out of the city that offers full rejuvenation and medical treatments for a full-body relaxation experience. For medical spas that focus primarily on one treatment, like plastic surgery, having a modern, central location can help your clients feel like they are going to a professional medical professional that offers the best results.
You need to decide what angle to approach your business. This is how you will be able to best decide where and what type of location will be best suited for your brand.
To help save, look for properties that previously held spa facilities. Do investigate, however, before you save that dotted line. A thoughtless business owner could have done up a new spa and failed because customers did not want to travel the distance or otherwise did not like the location it was in.
If the location is good, then an old medical spa or spa facility can be a great way to get started sooner with less renovating costs. You can keep the original décor, but for the best results revamping it and improving its aesthetic will go a long way towards making your medical spa more appealing for those coming for wellness to health services.
Partner with Brands Carefully
When you sell products, you partner with that brand. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get a kickback or any gain. You are both representing each other, which means it’s important to really test out and explore the product line offerings. Having multiple price-point options is a great idea, but only if each offers a standard of quality that you want to put your practice behind.
Choose Your Initial Service Menu
A great medical spa will typically have a mixture of holistic and medical services. Focussing on one area to start, however, can be a great idea. For example, you can offer several skin services. On top of facelifts and Botox services, you can also offer skin treatments, masks, chemical peels, and facials. By focusing on a variety of invasive and holistic services, you can target the same client multiple times.
People only need Botox, for example, every three to four months. By offering facials and other skin treatments designed to tighten skin or increase collagen production that drifts into the holistic side of your practice, you can convince that client to come in between Botox sessions for ongoing treatments and wellness benefits.
Creating the Infrastructure
You will then need to create the infrastructure. You’ll need a website, you need a booking system, you need an invoicing, accounting, and payment system. There are so many tools out there that can completely change the game when it comes to managing your medical spa. For best results, always choose a management system that is designed for spas or medical practices, and work with a web developer to offer your clients or patients advanced control from their pocket.
For example, customers should be able to book and even pay for their services online and manage their appointment from that online portal. You could even set up subscriptions. If they love a product you sell, offer a small discount to change that single purchase to a subscription so that they never run out and you can increase your stable revenue.
Medical Insurance
As a medical spa, you will need medical insurance and liability insurance. The reason why you need both is that medical insurance will cover your services, while liability insurance will cover you if someone slips on their way to your practice, or gets hurt because something fell on them. Choose your insurance wisely, as this can actually work to prove to new clients that they are safe and have chosen well when they come to you.
Get Ready to Launch
With all of this information and planning are done, you will be ready to launch. If you don’t have the money to hire a marketing expert off the bat, don’t worry. Instead, you’ll want to outsource your marketing needs with an agency, so you can get the best results and launch with a bang.
