Dr. Jonathan Kaplan

Dr. Jonathan Kaplan is a board-certified plastic surgeon based in San Francisco, and founder/CEO of BuildMyBod Health, a price transparency-lead generation platform. You can watch him operate and educate @realdrbae on Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.

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Articles by Dr. Jonathan Kaplan

• Some hospitals, surgery centers still aren’t performing cosmetic surgery

  Monday, June 01, 2020

  Here in San Francisco, the city and health department issued a directive on May 15 allowing elective surgery. In the directive, it was very clear elective surgery, including cosmetic surgery and dental procedures, could move forward. For this reason, we began performing cosmetic surgery in our in-office AAAASF-accredited operating room the following Monday, May 18. Based on previously scheduled cases and newly booked procedures, we'll be operating at full capacity for the foreseeable future. While we have the luxury of performing cosmetic surgery in our own facility, not all facilities are proceeding with cosmetic surgery. Why not?

• One step closer: Price transparency in healthcare

  Monday, November 18, 2019

  It's official: Price transparency in healthcare is closer to reality. On Nov. 15, the Trump administration released new rules requiring hospitals to publish their charges and negotiated rates. You may be thinking, "Oh, this doesn't affect me! It only affects hospitals and their employed physicians." But make no mistake, this affects all physicians.

• Price transparency can be exciting

  Wednesday, April 24, 2019

  Healthcare providers worry about the advent of price transparency for many reasons. It could be the concern that patients will focus on cost rather than the doctor-patient relationship, or they worry their competitors will check their price points and try to undercut them. With various insurance plans and deductibles, it's considered too difficult to offer actionable pricing insights to the consumer. All of these concerns are understandable. But they're also surmountable, as detailed below.

• Butt lift, lip injections highlight 2016 plastic surgery pricing report

  Wednesday, February 03, 2016

  BuildMyBod Health has released its fourth-annual doctor-provided cosmetic surgery pricing report. Much like 2015, the Brazilian Butt Lift continues to be popular this year. Of all the "wishlists" submitted to doctors across the U.S. and Austrailia, 10 percent are interested in the cost of the Brazilian Butt Lift.

• Beneath the surface of Sientra’s troubles

  Monday, November 16, 2015

  It's been a bad couple of months for Sientra, the North American distributor of Silimed breast implants. And it's too bad because they're a scrappy young company that gave women additional choices when it came to breast implants for cosmetic or reconstructive purposes.

• Should hospitals compete in the health insurance market?

  Tuesday, April 21, 2015

  I believe in capitalism, and I believe that a company shouldn't be ashamed of trying to make a profit. After all, staying in business is the name of the game. But when it comes to your healthcare, there is some unwritten rule (or maybe it is written in the form of the Hippocratic Oath) that entities involved in healthcare should care about your well-being in addition to caring about making money.

• New healthcare price study hides the true cost of care

  Thursday, January 22, 2015

  A recent Reuters article discusses the huge disparity in prices for common surgical procedures such as hip and knee replacement. The article highlights a study by Blue Cross Blue Shield that is self-serving to say the least. It points out how doctors and insurers charge high prices for these procedures and, depending on the facility, prices can fluctuate by up to 300 percent.

• Study: Quicker surgery is better

  Friday, January 16, 2015

  In a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers found that longer surgery duration is associated with increased risk of blood clots forming in the leg and leading to a pulmonary embolism. What does this mean?

• Is medical tourism ever safe?

  Tuesday, July 15, 2014

  Another horror story involving medical tourism came out of the Dominican Republic last week. A woman from New York went down to the island nation for a tummy tuck and apparently died on the table. While details are murky at this point, there are a few lessons that can be drawn from this situation.

• Umbrage and the VA hospital scandal

  Monday, May 26, 2014

  The definition of "umbrage" is feeling offended by what someone has said or done. If you've been following the scandal surrounding the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Phoenix, you are hearing from a lot of politicians taking umbrage with the actions of that particular VA and how they provided poor service to our veterans.

• Plastic surgery report shows prices vary by generation

  Thursday, February 06, 2014

  What's the first thing you want to know about plastic surgery but the hardest to find? Pricing, cost, budget, how much this is going to set me back, and can I afford it? Plastic surgery pricing can be difficult to understand because there are so many factors involved.

• Breast cancer screening: A long road ahead

  Wednesday, January 08, 2014

  ​In a recent New York Times article, the authors give a great summation into the truth and uncertainty in breast cancer screening. With such an emotional and destabilizing life event as breast cancer, women want clear and concise information. This article and the JAMA article it is based on takes a courageous stand to say: It's not clear and certainly not concise.

• Pharmaceutical industry exerts influence on statin guidelines

  Thursday, December 05, 2013

  On Nov. 12, the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) came out with their 2013 guidelines for who should and should not be on statin therapy to lower their bad cholesterol levels. When I saw them, I was surprised by the recommendations of widespread expansion of statin use. The new guidelines recommended what amounts to one-third of American adults being placed on cholesterol-lowering statins. To me, this smacked of industry influence because it was so obvious that one particular industry would benefit greatly from these recommendations. Maybe I was being paranoid. So I decided to do a little research.

• The dirty little secret of how to choose the best surgeons

  Monday, November 18, 2013

  Someone finally figured it out. How do you choose the right surgeon for your procedure? Online reviews? Statistical data in which it's unclear how the data was collected and what variables were used? As you may have gathered from these rhetorical questions, none of these methods is adequate in choosing the right surgeon. But a research group in Michigan has indeed figured out how to choose the best surgeons for your surgery.

• Consumers must also be held accountable for medical credit cards

  Wednesday, November 06, 2013

  Consumers interested in various veterinary or medical services that are typically out-of-pocket may pay for those services with a credit card. But if they don't have a credit card due to a less-than-stellar credit rating, they may have to turn to a medical credit card. These come in the form of iCare and CareCredit. These medical credit cards have come under fire lately in a recent New York Times article and follow-up editorial.

• Records show Marilyn Monroe’s plastic surgery — or do they?

  Thursday, October 31, 2013

  It was front page news on the Drudge Report. Or maybe you read it directly from the source on London's Express daily? We may finally have proof that Marilyn Monroe had plastic surgery to achieve that "natural" bombshell appearance.

• Physician burnout: No one cares — but you should

  Thursday, October 17, 2013

  ​Have you read the articles over the last several months about physician burnout and fatigue? I’ll admit that as someone in the physician fishbowl, I’m on the inside and hear a lot about physician burnout that most of the public may not see. But doctors are upset and having significant emotional distress because of their chosen field.

• The Affordable Care Act: They gave it the wrong name

  Monday, October 07, 2013

  Most Americans are thinking this major new piece of healthcare legislation, the Affordable Care Act, is going to make health insurance more affordable. Why do most Americans think it's going to be more affordable? Picture me with my hands cupped on both sides of my mouth screaming, "because it's got the word 'affordable' in it!" But this is not the case. Clearly, unarguably, they will be more expensive.

• Complications from laser lipo when not performed by plastic surgeons

  Thursday, October 03, 2013

  Laser liposuction is powerful and requires training to avoid burning of the skin and extensive scarring. The problem is that most doctors using laser lipo are typically the least trained in liposuction techniques because they aren’t plastic surgeons.

• How many cosmetic procedures can be done at once?

  Tuesday, September 24, 2013

  I often have patients in the office or at a seminar ask, "How many cosmetic procedures can be done at once?" And the short answer is, "It depends." The longer answer revolves around a few things.