also why would you sign a contract with that in it?
Because they just finished residency, have kids now 3 years in to a local school system and a spouse that wants some stability… Oh, and they’re broke as a joke with massive student loan notes now due, and the home town place (that knows all of this) they are signing their life away to offered a really cool looking sign on bonus that will be SO MUCH HELP!
… only it’s not help since the IRS only gives you 60% of it… and when you realize you hate where you work, it’s too damn late because not only is the non compete there, but you also now owe the GROSS prorated amount of your bonus money back, which you don’t have, because you’re still really really really broke. Local systems prey on new grads this way. It’s really wrong and sick. There should be more education on this, but I can see how a financial advisor giving a noon conference lecture on how your health system is going to try to screw you wouldn’t be too kosher with the brass.
Primary care docs are the real focus when it comes to noncompetes. Local system A starts screwing you over? Talk to local system B, get them to pay back your bonus you owe from A, and take your 3,000 patients with you. Way too easy without a non-compete. This can’t be allowed to happen.
Here’s where I’ll go off the reservation a bit, since my rantmobile motor is running hot tonight. Here’s a little insider baseball peek in to something else that’s huge that many docs outside of primary care aren’t aware of, and my take on what I see as the true intention.
A growing trend is for office calls to now go directly to a centralized call center. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Dr. Frustrated (who has a large panel but has always been able to accommodate) doesn’t have an opening for the next 17 1/2 years, but Dr Reallynicenewgrad has something tomorrow at 9. So Dr Newguy starts seeing work-ins, new patients, and building a panel, he’s great at what he does and ‘his’ patients really love him, but they now play the patient shuffle with him (because his schedule is ‘full’ as well) and now ‘his’ patients have no freaking clue who they’re seeing, or what that person’s qualifications are. It’s pretty stinking sweet when you’ve been an attending for over 10 years and your appointment card says ‘provider’.
Dr Frustrated moves on and after 2-3 years, newguy probably does the same. He may or may not come back after his noncompete, but it won’t matter all that much since patients never really built a long term bond with him anyway. In reality they just look at ‘providers’ as intake monkeys. It sucks there, so likely a lot of turnover and they know this, but it doesn’t matter. It’s probably a way to get cheaper ‘providers’ anyway.
Sorry about the rant, but I’m living it, and haven’t seen it brought to light yet. So… Here’s where y’all feel it in the fromunda. The call center, that is staffed with nurses (you know advice from a nurse is looked at as gold) is also *prossibly* a pretty sweet steer job for the ED. (when pool players used to go on the road to gamble the local steer man that put them in good action usually wanted at least a 20% ‘jelly roll.’ I doubt the nurses see any of this, though.)
This may? help to explain at least some of your ‘why the hell are you here’ business. Dr Frustrated’s office (or better yet, they say Dr Frustrated) sent me here for my migraine and 175 systolic. I might have run out of my Bystolic, but I’m not sure. It’s really all I wanted to know but THE NURSE (gold advice, bro) told me that she was worried and I to come here. Can we hurry this up, I’m supposed to work tonight and I don’t want to take a demerit. Oh yeah, here’s the card to my high deductible private insurance plan. I hope this isn’t going to be too much. It’s WRONG and makes me so damn mad.
Let a board meeting go down and suits hear that primary care is down 12%, ED is down 10% and ortho and neurosurg surgeries are both down 7% over this time last year because they ‘lost’ 5 of their best long time primary care docs (and their panels) to the system across town… facilitated by non-competes being illegal. They would look like they’re shi**ing peach seeds.
They won’t let non-competes go quietly. I wonder how much $$$,$$$,$$$ they had to pony up so the cute little ‘doesn’t apply to non-profits’ exclusion was written in to the decision.
www.ftc.gov
) stating that it has very clear and historically established control over 501c3's when they are making market-wide policies and that their inability to make non-profit *specific* policies does not invalidate their ability to make "everyone in the market" policies.
