HausMD The Medspa in White Plains, which opened Friday, March 1, is the latest in a rich array of spa offerings in our area. But don’t expect burbling fountains and cucumber slices on clients’ eyes. Not that the 1,800-square-foot space isn’t pleasant, with its neutral palette, modern décor and three treatment rooms dotted with engaging prints of Thomas McKnight paintings of vibrant rooms overlooking tony locales.
Still, “This is not a spa focused on treatments by aestheticians,” said medical director Kenneth O. Rothaus, M.D., founder of Rothaus Plastic Surgery, which has its main location on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “These are more intensive procedures that need a medical professional.”
They include an array of facials, peels and textured treatments that make use of the latest body sculpting, dermaplaning, microdermabrasion, microneedling and radiofrequency technologies, which are designed to firm, rejuvenate and smooth face and form. They also reflect an attitude adjustment and demographic shift regarding spas and cosmetic procedures in recent years, accounting for why Rothaus wanted to establish a medspa in his home county of Westchester for noninvasive and minimally invasive procedures.
Gone are the days when the medspa was the province of the affluent and the celebrated. Now, Rothaus said, business professionals – particularly millennials and Gen Zers – are looking to maintain a youthful appearance as part of their careers as well as their overall wellness.
Increasingly, these clients are male – more than 10%, said Courtney Brown, PA-C, a physician assistant who serves as clinical director of the medspa – although the vast majority are still female.
Among those treatments popular with men, Rothaus said, are the CoolPeel and Physiq body contouring. The CoolPeel is a gentle laser resurfacing treatment designed to smooth uneven texture, tighten pores, reduce fine lines and improve brown spots. It requires an hour of time – the treatment itself is 15 minutes – is pain-free and has no downtime, Rothaus said. Physiq is a noninvasive device that uses both electric muscle stimulation (EMS) and heat energy to tone muscle and decrease fat in such areas as the arms, abdomen, love handles and thighs.
“Women like the same procedures,” Rothaus said, “but they are willing to try additional ones,” like RF (radiofrequency) microneedling. This, he added, uses long needles spaced farther apart to penetrate deeper into the skin and emit radiofrequency for collagen production and rejuvenation. Wrinkles ease, skin tightens and pore size shrinks.
As to whether members of Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) are too young for such cosmetic procedures, Brown said, “it depends. Some twentysomethings naturally have fine lines, and they have high profile jobs. They want to appear a certain way.”
“If you start early maintenance,” Rothaus added, “you will look more natural as you age.”
For Rothaus and Brown, these are exciting times in cosmetic procedures, which combined with plastic surgery is an $11.8 billion industry in the United States. There are laser- and energy-based devices like the Helix, which fires two different wavelengths into two different layers of the skin to resurface it, Rothaus said.
“You have to know what to target and where to focus the energy,” he said of the Helix. “There are two different targets at different depths.”
Another trend is the combination of devices and injectables as in Hyperdilute Radiesse, in which the Radiesse is diluted with saline and reinjected to stimulate collagen growth and reduce crepiness and fine lines, he added.
Growing up on Long Island, the New York City-born Rothaus always wanted to be a doctor. His is an Ivy League-studded résumé – undergraduate at Yale University, Harvard Medical School and general and plastic surgery training on the Columbia University and Cornell University campuses of what is now New York-Presbyterian Hospital (formed when New York Hospital and Presbyterian Hospital merged in 1998.)
“I missed Penn (University of Pennsylvania), Dartmouth (College) and Brown (University),” Rothaus said to laughter.
Though he trained in general surgery with an eye to a cardiothoracic specialty, Rothaus gravitated to the artistry and variety of reconstructive plastic surgery – a career that he said would also enable him to have a family life in Westchester. With New York Hospital’s blessing, he and doctors in various disciplines opened University Physicians in Larchmont. When New York Hospital took over United in the early 1990s, Rothaus ran the cosmetic surgery center. United closed in 2005 and Rothaus decided to leave Westchester. (His surgical practice in Manhattan handles everything from face and eye lifts, liposuction and breast augmentation – the most popular procedures – to tummy tucks and rhinoplasty.)
But by then, he said, he had so many Westchester patients that he stayed on, purchasing a building in the shadow of White Plains Hospital some 10 to 15 years ago. (He rents a consultation room to friend Alexander Mauskop, M.D., a neurologist and founding director of the New York Headache Center, who is an expert in migraines and the use of Botox to treat them.)
Brown shares with Rothaus a Long Island and a Cornell background. After her undergraduate work at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and training at Boston Children’s Hospital, she received her PA from Weill Cornell Medicine in Manhattan, where she interned with Rothaus, eventually becoming his surgical assistant. She, too, loves the variety of her work but also the outcome potential.
“People come here, because they want to see you, not because they have to see you.”
For her and Rothaus, HausMD is a place of happy endings.
There is an open house for HausMD The Medspa from 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, March 6. The medspa is at 2 Greenridge Ave. in White Plains. (Enter around the corner at 99 Maple Ave.) For more, call 212-737-1424 or visit www.thehausmd.com.
