Physicians: have non-compete clauses harmed you, your patients, or your family? The Federal Trade Commission wants to know. They have proposed a rule to ban all non-compete clauses and are seeking comment through March 20 2023.

 

Make it Short and Personal

Short, concise, original stories are most effective.

 

Considerations when you write your comment: 

• 74% of physicians are now hospital or corporate employees of increasingly consolidated corporate hospitals or Wall-Street backed staffing firms.

• Non-compete clauses prevent physicians from serving in their own communities, creating "medical deserts" and disrupting physician families.

• Non-compete clauses silence physicians from speaking out about patient safety as fear of termination means they will .

• Non-competes in medicine can put patients at risk when physicians lose their positions for business reasons. It takes time for a physician to learn how to best serve their patients and their community and to save lives. Non compete clauses decrease access to life-saving expertise.

• Burnout, more accurately "moral injury" in medicine is at an all-time high of 63% in 2021 with 1 in 5 physicians intending to leave practice within two years, with emergency medicine topping this list. 

• Non compete clauses restrict physicians' ability to change jobs within their community further contributing to burnout and worsening the physician shortage. 

Comment on the FTC Website Now

 

Context: 

The Federal Trade Commission has proposed to ban all non-compete clauses, asserting that they are an unfair method of competition. The American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics states that physicians should not enter into covenants that “unreasonably restrict the right of a physician to practice medicine for a specified period of time or in a specified geographic area on termination of a contractual relationship”.

The healthcare industry has been consolidating rapidly alongside widespread violations of state prohibitions on the Corporate Practice of Medicine, continuing to disrupt the patient-physician relationship. 74% of physicians are now hospital or corporate employees while the corporations they are employed by are increasingly consolidated, with much of this being driven by Wall Street Private Equity Firms which the American Antitrust Institute calls “fundamentally incompatible” with a stable healthcare system that serves patients and promotes the health and wellbeing of the population. 

Non-compete clauses are one mechanism used by corporations to protect corporate profits at the expense of patient care and physicians wishing to serve their own communities. The FTC is looking for your personal stories. 

Resources

The FTC’s webpage and related materials regarding the NPRM on Noncompete Clauses are available here.

The press release regarding the NPRM on Noncompete Clauses is available here.  

The fact sheet regarding the NPRM on Noncompete Clauses is available here.

The NPRM on Noncompete Clauses is available here.

See interview with FTC Commissioner Lina Khan here