Higuera Plastic Surgery & Wellness Spa
Under our open methodology this clinic scores 57.5/100 on structural verification: physician certification, licences, facility and legal-entity traceability, identifier disclosure and advertising honesty.
Rank #13 of 15 ranked clinics · last checked 19 September 2026
No crown: crowns require register-verified gates, never a clinic's own claim.
Summary
Single-physician plastic-surgery and wellness-spa practice with locations in the Condado area of San Juan and in Manatí. Physician named with role; no matching ABMS board record was found under this name.
Axis by axis
rubric value 1–5 · ? could not verify (no points, not a negative finding) · — not applicable: this country has no register of that class · OFF official register · SEC secondary source
| Axis | Finding (rubric anchor) | Value | Source class | Weight | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M1 | Specialist certification of the responsible physician Found in the register with a current status; the register does not disclose the specialty, or discloses a different one (including “no specialisation”), and the clinic claims no protected title. The register's own line is shown on the profile. ABMS Certification Matters: re-searched 2026-09-18 (with and without first name) — still no record for this physician. NPPES NPI Registry lists Dr. Stephen Higuera (NPI 1669702783, Guaynabo, PR) with taxonomy “Plastic Surgery” (primary) and PR licence 17522 — a federal registry record with matching specialty, but the taxonomy is self-declared at enumeration (m1Rule tier 3). [nppes] |
SEC | 26 | 2026-09-18 | |
| M2 | Identifiability of the responsible physician Physician(s) named with role and tied to this address. Sole physician named with role and tied to the San Juan (Condado) address. [site] |
SEC | 16 | 2026-09-02 | |
| M3 | Basic medical licence Could not verify — this register is closed to machine queries in this country, so the axis is left out of the coverage calculation for every clinic on this site. Not a negative finding. Reason: Register closed to machine queries. Last attempt: none_found, 18 September 2026 — Re-probed 2026-09-18 (loop pass 1): orcps.salud.pr.gov, the API host orcpsws.salud.pr.gov and the mirror orcps.salud.gov.pr all still fail to complete a TCP handshake from this egress (curl exit 28 / HTTP 000, confirmed again via a live Chrome session for the sibling facility_registry host); salud.pr.gov is likewise unreachable. A register that answers is not closed — this one still does not. Secondary routes checked and excluded: pr.pcshq.com Juntas Examinadoras 'ESPECIALISTAS EN BELLEZA' board licenses non-physician aesthetic staff only, never doctors; NPPES NPI Registry gives a self-reported licence NUMBER at enumeration only, never a status check; no Puerto Rico medical or dermatology society publishes a licence lookup. none_found. |
? | ? | 8 | 2026-09-19 |
| M4 | Facility registration Could not verify — no points, counts against coverage, not a negative finding. Reason: Queried, no match. Last attempt: facility_registry, 19 September 2026 — No row carries the practice name, the physician surname or the street address. The file lists Medicare-certified facilities only; an office-based practice outside it is not a finding. SARAFS (the Puerto Rico facility licence) timed out from both egresses again on 2026-09-19. |
? | ? | 10 | 2026-09-19 |
| M5 | Legal-entity traceability Only a brand, without a legal form and without a responsible person. Whatever we find ourselves is shown on the profile as a fact and does not raise this cell. Departamento de Estado corporate register: Higuera Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery P.S.C., index 4826-711, status ACTIVE; resident agent and officer Stephen Higuera match the named physician Dr. Stephen Higuera, and the registered address (Calle Washington #29, San Juan) matches the clinic address exactly. [v1.3 2026-09-22: the clinic publishes neither the number nor the legal entity (audit not_published, entity name not found on the clinic pages; the entity was found by us — shown as a fact)] [rcp-search] |
OFF | 8 | 2026-09-22 | |
| M6 | Self-disclosure of identifiers No identifiers at all. Site states the physician is a “certified plastic surgeon” without naming an issuer or a licence number. [site] |
SEC | 10 | 2026-09-02 | |
| M7 | Advertising honesty No pattern from the lexicon found. Re-scanned home and cirugia-plastica pages 2026-09-18: patient-testimonial superlatives ("100% Recommended", "Best Dr. ever") are out of scope; the clinic’s own text carries only a factual biographical claim (sole PR-born graduate of a named training programme) — no guarantee or unmatched-superlative pattern. [site] [site-cirugia] |
SEC | 12 | 2026-09-18 | |
| M8 | Cross-locale consistency Could not verify — no points, counts against coverage, not a negative finding. Reason: Single language front. Last attempt: clinic_site, 18 September 2026 — one language front; no hreflang alternates or language links The clinic site publishes one language front; nothing to compare. |
? | ? | 5 | 2026-09-19 |
| M9 | Patient documents One. FAQ section on the surgery page discusses post-operative recovery and pain management; no consent form, itemised risks/contraindications section, revision policy or complaint route found. [site-cirugia] |
SEC | 5 | 2026-09-02 |
Score ceilings
No ceiling applies. We never apply one on 'not found' alone.
Holds
No hold on this profile.
Inclusion policy
Four mechanical conditions. The first three decide whether a clinic is listed at all; the fourth decides whether it can be scored.
| Identifiable: live public surface + working in-country contact | verified yes [site] |
|---|---|
| Provides the service itself (not an aggregator, booking site or tour packager) | verified yes [site] |
| In scope: the intervention is performed by a physician | verified yes [site] |
| Names a responsible physician | verified yes [site] |
Who is responsible
Named physicians and the legal entity, as published and as matched in the registers. A missing number is a statement about disclosure, not about licensing.
| Physician | Role | Register ID |
|---|---|---|
| Dr. Stephen Higuera [site] | Plastic and reconstructive surgeon | not published |
Legal entity: Higuera Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery P.S.C. · 4826-711 [rcp-search]
Scope and procedure segments
Clinic focus: specialist (no focus adjustment) [site]
Secondary findings (not scored)
What a professional society, an international directory, a hospital page or another jurisdiction’s register says, shown for information where the country’s own register is closed. These facts enter neither the score nor the coverage.
- M5 · Legal-entity traceability SECCompany register entry found for Higuera Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery P.S.C. (4826-711); the clinic's own surface names neither the entity nor the number.[rcp-search]
What we could not verify
- M3 · Basic medical licence — Register closed to machine queries
- M4 · Facility registration — Queried, no match
- M8 · Cross-locale consistency — Single language front
These cells score nothing and are not negative findings. A cell on a register that is closed to machine queries is left out of the coverage calculation; the others count against it. Each one names why it is empty; an attempt that did not complete is re-run in the next collection pass. If you can point to a public source, send it.
Contact details
| Website | https://www.drhiguera.com/ |
|---|---|
| Phone | +1 787-998-4000 |
| Address | Ashford Medical Center, 29 C. Washington, Suite 401, San Juan, PR 00907 |
| City | San Juan |
For identification only; details change — verify with the clinic directly.
Sources
| ID | Source | Class | What it supports | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| site | https://www.drhiguera.com/ | clinic's own site | physician, address, phone, superlative quote | 2 September 2026 |
| site-cirugia | https://www.drhiguera.com/cirugia-plastica | clinic's own site | menu (breast, body contouring); FAQ recovery information | 2 September 2026 |
| leie | https://oig.hhs.gov/exclusions/downloadables/UPDATED.csv | official register | OIG LEIE bulk CSV filtered STATE=PR, LASTNAME contains HIGUERA: no matching active exclusion | 2 September 2026 |
| rcp-search | https://rceapi.estado.pr.gov/api/corporation/search | official register | POST rceapi.estado.pr.gov/api/corporation/search q=HIGUERA → HIGUERA PLASTIC AND RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY P.S.C., 4826-711, ACTIVE | 2 September 2026 |
| nppes | https://npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov/api/?version=2.1&last_name=Higuera&… | secondary | NPPES NPI registry: Stephen Higuera, PR licence 17522, taxonomy Plastic Surgery (primary) — self-reported, not a licence-status check | 18 September 2026 |
Change history
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| 22 September 2026 | axes.M5: 5 → 2 (Methodology v1.3 (owner rulings 2026-09-22) — § F rule 6 — the clinic publishes neither the number nor the legal entity (audit not_published, entity name not found on the clinic pages; the entity was found by us — shown as a fact)) |
| 19 September 2026 | axes.M4: null → null (Re-run against the CMS Provider of Services file from the second egress (v1.2 pass 1 retry): queried, no match.) |
| 18 September 2026 | axes.M7: null → 5 (Clinic-site rescan (loop pass 1): quote from the withdrawn cell no longer present; no lexicon pattern found in the clinic’s own text.) |
| 18 September 2026 | axes.M1: null → 3 (No ABMS Certification Matters record found (re-searched); NPPES cross-check lists a matching Plastic Surgery taxonomy and PR licence number (m1Rule tier 3, loop pass 1).) |
| 18 September 2026 | axes.M3: null → null (Register re-probed (loop pass 1, v1.2): medical_licence host confirmed still unreachable from this egress; secondary routes searched and exhausted (none_found) — reclassified retry -> registry_closed, leaves the coverage denominator per v1.2.) |
| 2 September 2026 | axes.M5: null → 5 (Departamento de Estado RCP match (follow-up pass)) |
| 2 September 2026 | axes.M7: 4 → null (Citation re-check: quote not found at https://www.drhiguera.com/ (quote not found); cell degraded to could-not-verify.) |
| 2 September 2026 | Initial collection. |
Correction or right of reply
Corrections are applied with a source link and logged publicly. A clinic statement without a source is published next to the data; the score does not change.
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