Physicians Practice - June 2008 - (Page 45) HUMAN RESOURCES sometimes bad things happen with seemingly good people. That can make things really difficult for your practice, so it’s crucial that your employment agreement outlines appropriate and reasonable grounds for termination. The very short list of terminationfor-cause items includes: • The loss of a medical license; • An inability to secure malpractice insurance; • The loss of hospital staff privileges; and • Being convicted of a felony. You may also want to include language about unprofessional conduct or other expectations of professional performance similar to Society Hill Anesthesia Consultants, but both Roediger and Witte warn against trying to make this section too long and detailed. You also don’t want to make the grounds for dismissal overly pejorative. “These days where you see lawyers go off into uncharted territory is about what happens if the cost of your malpractice insurance goes up,” says Roediger. “That’s not a basis for immediate termination, by the way. That’s ridiculous.” Similarly, Roediger suggests keeping to genuine infractions for dismissal. “If you lose your hospital staff privileges, [termination] should not be for something like a record suspension. It should be if you permanently lose your hospital staff privileges.” If a physician does breach the agreement, he should have some sort of notice and period of “cure” business out the door when they leave. But job candidates don’t want to find themselves unemployable in your community if things don’t work out at your practice. That’s why crafting noncompete clauses (sometimes referred to as restrictive covenants) is a delicate matter, says Edwards, whose multistate practice has more than 60 physicians and more than 100 certi- WHEELS OF JUSTICE “Attorneys are notorious for taking their sweet time on these things.” Dave Witte, The Curare Group READ MORE ABOUT IT! Visit PhysiciansPractice.com for additional articles and tools on adding a new physician to your practice. •Not sure if you can afford to hire another doc? Find out by clicking “Recruitment Pro Forma” in the tools section of our site. to correct any violations. Roediger suggests a 30-day cure period be specified in the agreement. Most employment agreements also contain a notice provision — either the practice giving notice of termination to the physician, or the physician giving notice of resignation to the practice. Because the standard notice term is 90 days, says Edwards, “we jokingly say these are just 90-day contracts, as opposed to one-year or two-year contracts.” However, since both the physician and the practice will need time to prepare for the physician’s departure, the notice period should be same for both sides. Protect the interests of your practice, but be sure to give physicians a chance to live up to your expectations, too. THE RESTRICTIVE COVENANT •Get unvarnished data on physician compensation and satisfaction by typing “Recruit” in the Search articles box, then clicking “Finance: How Does Your Pay Stack Up?” The AMA offers a sample physician employment agreement available online at www.ama-assn.org/ama/upload/mm/ 46/model_physician_aug.pdf. WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM Is there any practice that doesn’t want noncompete clauses in its employment agreements? And are there any physician job candidates who aren’t wary of them? You are entitled to reasonably protect your own interests by preventing departing employees from taking fied registered nurse anesthetists. You want to avoid language that “scares people away because it is too onerous,” but isn’t “so soft that what is the point of actually having it?” So where’s the middle ground? First, make sure you’re clear on the geographic area you most need to protect. Roediger asks her practice-clients to go through their patient base and find out where 80 percent of their patients come from. “I think that it is important for them to not just willy-nilly assign an area that they want to protect,” she explains. “I think it is important for them to really figure out where their practice service area is and to derive a noncompete based on reality, not just fear.” Many practices simply put a 50mile restriction in their agreements, but they might have an easier time attracting qualified physician candidates if they discovered most of their patient base came from only a fivemile area. The same holds true of more general geographic areas: A departing physician expects to move if your practice is in a small town, but not if it’s in a major city. JUNE 2008 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | 45 http://PhysiciansPractice.com http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/upload/mm/46/model_physician_aug.pdf http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/upload/mm/46/model_physician_aug.pdf http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM
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