As a physician seeking an employed position, finalizing the details of your employment will require a contract. For many young physicians, that can be new ground.
The AMA helps physicians build a better future for medicine, advocating in the courts and on the Hill to remove obstacles to patient care and confront today’s greatest health crises.
An AMA STEPS Forward toolkit, “What to Look for in Your First or Next Practice: Evaluate the Practice Environment to Match Your Priorities,” offers young physicians a breakdown of available practice settings and how they differ.
One area of the decision that is covered in depth by the toolkit is which aspects of employment that a physician may be able to negotiate. In general, those are parts of a physician employment contract.
Wes Cleveland is a senior attorney for the AMA who has worked extensively on physician contracting. Aside from the standard recommendation to seek advice from an experienced lawyer to review any employment contract, he outlined a few points that young physicians should take note of when negotiating their employment contracts.
Restrictive covenants—more commonly referred to as noncompete clauses—are fairly standard in physician contracts. What Cleveland cautions against is a contract that applies the restrictive covenant even if the employer terminates employment without cause, meaning the physician didn’t cause the termination of their employment (a layoff is one example).
“The best practice in those cases is...
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