Physician ResourcesProject AesCert Guidance
A Path toResume Aesthetic Care
Project AesCert™ Guidance: Practical Considerations for Aesthetic Medicine Professionals Supporting Clinic Preparedness in Response to the SARS-CoV-2 Outbreak
About the Project AesCert Guidance
Aesthetic medicine practices are confronted with daunting medical and business challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a range of financial hardships and patient and staff safety concerns. For the last several months as a sweeping nationwide effort was undertaken to “flatten the curve” of disease transmission, the vast majority of offices across the country have been closed, both by operation of law and common sense, in order to protect patients, staff, and the community at large from unnecessary exposure to COVID-19. In the coming weeks, on a phased-in basis, individual aesthetic medicine practices will make the decision to reopen and gradually resume operations, as state and local governments ease restrictions. In so doing, these offices are forced to navigate a disparate and often conflicting web of considerations, resulting in a paucity of reliable guidance and support.
Uniquely, the Project AesCert Guidance represents the first truly multidisciplinary consensus, synthesizing the best current clinical and research insights from infectious disease, immunology, and public health experts, with a practical understanding of what is required to assist aesthetic medicine specialists in returning to patient care with reasonable risk minimization strategies and sustainable procedures and workflows. To chart this course, it is critical that all disciplines of medicine, aesthetic and otherwise, share available information and best practices and work together to evolve a new paradigm for practicing safely in a dramatically changed environment. This confluence of aesthetic leadership with the experience of those charged with understanding the complexity of SARS-CoV-2 and in unit treating COVID-19 is a key distinguishing feature of this Guidance.
How to useThis Document
This Guidance is intended to provide aesthetic medicine physicians and their staff with a practical guide to safety considerations and easy-to-implement resources and tools to support clinic preparedness for patients seeking non-surgical aesthetic treatments and procedures following the return-to-work phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The healthcare professional and other workplace standards for dealing with COVID-19 set forth by many federal, state, and local governmental authorities and public health officials should be considered seriously, and where required by law or otherwise applicable or prudent, followed thoughtfully. This Guidance is not intended to contravene any such other mandates, nor any applicable standards of care, all of which supersede this Guidance in the event of any conflict. Rather, it is intended to provide aesthetic physicians and their staff with an additional set of practical considerations for delivering aesthetic care safely and generally conducting business responsibly during the pendency of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is axiomatic that all such considerations are subject to the ultimate judgment of each individual healthcare professional, based on practice location and layout, patient situation, procedure details, office environment, staffing constraints, equipment and testing availability, and local legal and public health conditions. All of these elements are highly variable by region and also highly dynamic over time. As they evolve, particularly with respect to disease prevalence and public health resources, including testing capacity, contact tracing, and treatment and vaccine availability, many elements of the AesCert Guidance will bear reconsideration. Of necessity, the Guidance is based upon conditions as of the date of publication in early May, 2020, and was prepared by its authors to assist aesthetic medicine practices in the current disease environment.
PracticeResources
The following screening tools and other checklists have been created to provide aesthetic practices with a set of user-friendly, actionable tools to be used in conjunction with implementation of the Project AesCert Guidance. Click the links below to download PDF versions of the checklists referenced in the Project AesCert Guidance.
● Daily Treatment Room Disinfectant Checklist
● Common Area Disinfectant Checklist
● Wellness Screening Checklist
If you are interested in displaying the AesCert logo and program details in your office to signal that you practice the principles of the AesCert Guidance, or sharing the AesCert logo with your patients by email as part of your pre-visit communications, you can download supporting materials here.
In considering whether to use, display, or make available to patients the AesCert logo and other Practice Resources, consider that all such materials are intended to be utilized together with the totality of the principles and considerations throughout the AesCert Guidance.
