Dr. Michelle Hardaway has a way of talking about surgery that puts patients at ease before they have agreed to anything. She uses visual aids during consultations. She walks through medical history, physical findings, and realistic recovery timelines without rushing. She explains what a procedure can achieve and, just as importantly, what it cannot. That approach — thorough, transparent, and grounded in three decades of surgical experience — is what has defined her practice since long before she founded the Aesthetic Plastic Surgery & Laser Center in Farmington Hills. Dr. Hardaway is Board Certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a former Chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Detroit Receiving Hospital — a Level I Trauma Center — and an Assistant Clinical Professor of Surgery at Wayne State University School of Medicine. She holds active hospital privileges at Corewell Health (Beaumont), Providence Hospital through Henry Ford Health, and the Detroit Medical Center Hospitals. When patients in the Detroit metropolitan area are facing a consequential surgical decision, her name comes up for a reason.
The practice she has built in Farmington Hills reflects the same values that shaped her academic and hospital career: precision, patient education, and a commitment to results that look natural rather than performed. The onsite surgical center is QUAD A Accredited, meaning it meets the same safety standards as a hospital operating room — a distinction that matters for any procedure requiring anesthesia, and one that not every private plastic surgery practice can claim. For patients considering body contouring procedures, including abdominoplasty, the combination of Dr. Hardaway's surgical depth and the facility's clinical rigor represents something that is genuinely difficult to find in a single practice. Here is a closer look at how she thinks about that work, and what anyone in Southeast Michigan considering a significant surgical procedure needs to understand before they make a decision.
What Abdominoplasty Actually Requires — And Why Surgical Experience Is the Only Variable That Truly Matters
"Patients come in having done a lot of research," Dr. Hardaway explains. "They know the terminology. They've seen the before-and-after photos. What they often don't fully understand yet is that the outcome they're looking for is almost entirely determined by the surgeon's judgment in the operating room — not the technology, not the facility, not the price point."
That judgment is what thirty years of surgical practice builds. Abdominoplasty — commonly referred to as a tummy tuck — is among the most technically demanding procedures in body contouring. It involves the repositioning of abdominal muscles that have separated through pregnancy or significant weight change, the removal of excess skin and tissue, and the precise repositioning of the navel, all while managing tension across the abdominal wall in a way that produces a smooth, natural contour rather than a pulled or distorted result. The margin between an excellent outcome and a disappointing one is largely a function of the surgeon's ability to make real-time judgments about tissue quality, tension distribution, and anatomical proportion — decisions that cannot be made from a consultation photo or a surgical checklist.
At the Aesthetic Plastic Surgery & Laser Center, the process begins well before the operating room. Dr. Hardaway's consultations are structured around a thorough physical examination, a complete medical history review, and a direct conversation about what the patient's goals are and what is realistically achievable given their anatomy. Visual aids are used throughout — not as a sales tool, but as a communication tool. Patients leave the consultation understanding what the procedure involves, what the recovery timeline looks like, and what the result will likely be, rather than carrying a set of assumptions that may not match reality.
For patients who have experienced significant weight loss or multiple pregnancies, abdominoplasty is often part of a broader body contouring conversation. Dr. Hardaway's approach to the mommy makeover — a combination of procedures that typically addresses the abdomen, breasts, and flanks together — reflects the same surgical philosophy: individualized planning, conservative judgment about what can be safely accomplished in a single operative session, and a recovery plan that is honest about the time and support the process requires. The all-female staff at the practice creates an environment that many patients describe as meaningfully different from what they expected — supportive and unhurried in a way that makes a significant difference during the consultation and recovery phases.
The QUAD A Accreditation of the onsite surgical center is worth understanding in concrete terms. It means the facility has been independently inspected and certified to meet the same equipment, staffing, and safety protocol standards required of hospital operating rooms. For a procedure like abdominoplasty, which is performed under general anesthesia and involves a meaningful recovery period, that accreditation is not a marketing credential — it is a clinical one. Dr. Hardaway's active hospital privileges at multiple major Detroit-area health systems provide an additional layer of continuity of care that independent surgical centers without affiliated hospital relationships cannot offer.
What Patients in the Detroit Metropolitan Area Specifically Need to Understand
Southeast Michigan has no shortage of plastic surgery practices, and the range of experience, credentials, and facility standards across them is wider than most patients realize when they begin their search. The decision to undergo a body contouring procedure is not one that should be made primarily on the basis of price, convenience, or the volume of social media content a practice produces. It is a surgical decision, and surgical decisions deserve surgical scrutiny.
For patients in Farmington Hills, West Bloomfield, Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham, and the surrounding communities, Dr. Hardaway's practice offers something that is genuinely uncommon: a surgeon whose credentials span academic medicine, Level I trauma surgery, and private aesthetic practice, operating in a facility that meets hospital-grade safety standards. That combination is not the norm. It is the product of a career built on the kind of institutional rigor that most aesthetic practices have never been part of.
The pricing transparency that patients consistently describe in reviews of the practice is also worth noting. Gayla Markle, one of Dr. Hardaway's patients, specifically described the consultation as "educational" and the pricing as "fair and transparent" — a combination that is not universal in elective surgery, where fee structures can be opaque and the full cost of a procedure is sometimes not clear until well into the process. Dr. Hardaway's practice structures consultations around giving patients the information they need to make a real decision, not the information needed to close a sale.
For patients who have lost significant weight and are dealing with excess skin across the abdomen and flanks, or for mothers whose abdominal anatomy has been permanently altered by pregnancy, the question of whether surgery is appropriate is one that deserves a genuine clinical answer — not a reflexive yes from a practice that benefits from the procedure being performed. Dr. Hardaway's background in reconstructive surgery, where the standard of care is defined by patient outcomes rather than patient demand, shapes how she approaches those conversations.
What to Look For When Choosing a Plastic Surgeon for Body Contouring
The volume of information available to patients researching plastic surgery has never been greater, and the ability to distinguish between meaningful credentials and marketing credentials has never been more important. A few things are worth prioritizing when evaluating a surgeon for a body contouring procedure.
Board certification by the American Board of Plastic Surgery is the baseline, not the differentiator. It confirms that a surgeon completed an accredited residency and passed a rigorous examination — but it does not speak to the depth or breadth of their operative experience. Ask specifically about the volume of abdominoplasty procedures the surgeon performs annually, and ask to see a portfolio of results that includes patients with anatomy similar to your own. A surgeon who is selective about which cases they show you is a surgeon who is managing your expectations rather than meeting them.
Ask about the surgical facility and its accreditation status. A QUAD A or AAAHC accredited facility has been independently verified to meet hospital-equivalent safety standards. A non-accredited facility has not. For any procedure requiring general anesthesia, that distinction is clinically meaningful — not a formality. Ask whether the surgeon holds active hospital privileges, and at which institutions. A surgeon whose privileges are current at major health systems is one whose credentials have been continuously reviewed by those institutions' medical staff committees.
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Ask about the consultation process itself. A surgeon who conducts a thorough physical examination, reviews your complete medical history, and presents a realistic recovery timeline before recommending a procedure is one who is treating you as a patient. One who moves quickly from inquiry to procedure recommendation without that clinical foundation is one who is treating you as a transaction. The difference is visible in the consultation, long before the operating room.
A Surgeon Whose Depth of Experience Shows in Every Outcome
There is a version of plastic surgery that is transactional, trend-driven, and optimized for volume. And then there is the version Dr. Michelle Hardaway has practiced for thirty years — one grounded in the discipline of reconstructive surgery, shaped by academic medicine, and delivered with the kind of patient-centered care that produces results patients describe as a "natural refresh" rather than an obvious intervention.
The Aesthetic Plastic Surgery & Laser Center is the physical expression of that approach: a QUAD A Accredited facility, an all-female staff, and a surgeon whose credentials in both the academic and clinical dimensions of plastic surgery are among the strongest in Southeast Michigan. For patients in the Detroit metropolitan area who are ready to have a real conversation about what body contouring can achieve for them — and what it actually requires — that conversation starts here, with a surgeon who has spent three decades earning the right to have it.