Residency generally gives little training in negotiating physician employment contracts. Here’s an article that gives you a good head start.
Having the latest MGMA Compensation Survey and a good attorney on your side is essential in every contract negotiation.
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- My take: Heath Ledger, contracts, disease prevention
- Physicians are hiring agents to handle contract negotiations
- Contracts
- Patient satisfaction and physician compensation
- Hospital employment
- "The worst thing a doctor can do today is contract with an insurer"
- From doctor to physician assistant?
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I dealt with a group that I knew had a history over recent years of lots of docs leaving unhappy. I was careful to get a simple straightforward agreement in writing outlining the important points.
Virtually every item in that and other written assurances that I had was violated by them. I ultimately decided not to sue because I didn’t want the hassle and years of preoccupation. They had multiple attornies on their fulltime payroll and were politically connected judicially and so had the advantage. But their attitude, pretty much “tough tittie, sue us if you dare” nearly provoked me into it. The scuttlebutt in the local legal community, my lawyer tells me, is that nearly all their docs get embroiled in lawsuits upon departure now.
As he pointed out, I should have known better than to expect people whom I knew to be dishonorable to honor an agreement.
Get a good contract, but it is only as good as the people who sign it, and only as long as they are the ones making the decisions. Having a contract and enforcing it on someone who doesn’t intend to honor it are two different things.
And never sign any but the weakest of do not compete clauses. You have a medical license, don’t be a slave. You have a professional obligation to maintain enough autonomy that you can honor your obligation to put your patients first.
Better yet, the crooks will use your own AR to fund their defense against your suit for breach.
Anon 6:56 AM you mentioned noncompete clauses.
Bar associations in every state in the country prohibit such noncompete clauses. I have yet to see an exception. If you were a lawyer, hiring a new law school grad to your firm, if you put a noncompete in the employment contract, it would be the unethical practice of law.
The rationale is similar to what you alluded to with physicians. It would inhibit the public’s ability to access lawyers, inhibit the junior lawyer’s freedom to practice law.
Gotta give credit where credit is due. In this one aspect, I have to admit the legal profession is far more ethical than the medical profession.
Speaking of noncompetes. I believe Kevin practices in New Hampshire. Here is the rule from the New Hampshire Bar:
LAW FIRMS AND ASSOCIATIONS
Rule 5.6: Restrictions On Right To Practice
A lawyer shall not participate in offering or making:
(a) a partnership, shareholders, operating, employment, or other similar agreement that restricts the right of a lawyer to practice after termination of the relationship, except an agreement concerning benefits upon retirement; or
(b) an agreement in which a restriction on the lawyer’s right to practice is part of the settlement of a client controversy.
Source: http://www.nhbar.org/publications/ethics/rule-5-6.asp
The noncompete clause condoned by organized medicine would be unethical if done by a lawyer hiring a junior lawyer out of law school. Maybe “condoned” is too strong. Organized medicine frowns on the practice, with a wink. Knowing full well the imbalance of power between an established medical group and a new doctor fresh out of residency with a six-figure debt.
I have yet to find a State Bar association that does not consider noncompetes unethical in lawyer employment contracts.
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