EMERGENCY MEDICINE DOCTORS AND NON-COMPETES

It doesn’t seem to me that public policy (or the law) would allow non-compete clauses to prevent emergency room physicians from practicing medicine where ever they wanted and were needed. So, I was surprised to learn that this very problem exists in Virginia.

Emergency Physicians of Tidewater (EPT) and TeamHealth, a national physician staffing company, are fighting these issues in the Virginia Beach, Suffolk, and Hampton Roads areas of Virginia. EPT staffs five hospitals and a free-standing emergency department in South Hampton Roads for Sentara Healthcare, the region's largest health care provider. In addition to the hospitals, EPT members essentially founded the emergency medicine department at Eastern Virginia Medical School. The larger TeamHealth is owned by a global private equity fund. Both companies have non-compete provisions in their employment agreements with the individual emergency medicine physicians which prevent the doctors from working as an emergency medicine physician for a certain period of time in the same geographical area.

What happened to the goal of providing good medical care to all in need? Seems to me that this is just another example of “Corporate Medicine” where the decisions are made by business men and women whose only goal is to maximize a company’s profit. Even the emergency medicine academy is concerned about groups like EPT and TeamHealth because the practice of medicine "is not in that doctor's hands, it's in the hands of the corporation," said Dr. Robert McNamara, an AAEM board and chairman of the emergency medicine department at Temple University Medical School.

OKLAHOMA COURT HOLDS NON-COMPETE VIOLATES ANTITRUST LAW

This is good news! A Tulsa company’s lawsuit against a former employee accused of violating a non-compete agreement has been shot down by the Oklahoma Court of Appeals. The court found the non-compete agreement to be unenforceable and in violation of antitrust law.

The ruling in Vanguard Environmental Inc. vs. Misty Lynn Curler was based upon an old Oklahoma law which provided that “every contract by which any one is restrained from exercising a lawful profession, trade or business of any kind … is to that extent void.” This language is quite similar to federal law enacted in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against Standard Oil Co.’s abuse of monopoly power.

Read a full report on the case here.

NON-SOLICITATION AND CUSTOMER LISTS

If you have read our previous blogs you know that we are advocates of the employee in non-competition and non-solicitation disputes. We believe that such agreements should be void as contrary to public policy and a detriment to the free market economy.

Our biases aside, we thought we would pass along an article published by USA Today. The article is entitled, “Ask an Expert: Protecting your Customer List.” The article is slanted towards the employer but is good reading for employees as well.

Read the article here.