Cautious Congratulations on the Job Offer
W
hat should you look out for in employment agreements? Whether you’re transitioning from resident to practitioner or you’re making the move to a new facility, there are many potential pitfalls and practical considerations when negotiating an employment agreement. If you’re just focusing on salary, you’re not seeing the whole picture. It’s important to review any employment agreement, preferably with a lawyer, for monetary and non-monetary provisions. From the money side, sure you get a salary, but what about cost of living adjustments or bonuses? How does that system work? How are you going to get taken advantage of, and is there a way to balance it more in your favor? Compensation bonuses can be structured based on revenue generated, patients seen, hours worked, or a combination of these and other factors. If any of those factors are negotiable, it’s important to negotiate those up front. You also need to know your benefits. Who is paying your malpractice insurance premium? What about continuing education expenses, lab bills, and costs of purchasing new equipment? How about 401k and profit-sharing programs? These should all be spelled out in your employment agreement. Don’t expect any benefit to be available to you that isn’t directly defined in your contract.
On the non-monetary side, there are several concerns such as length of the contract, time commitments to the job, annual paid time off restrictions, commitments on bringing new patients into the practice, or what constitutes a breach of the agreement –termination with or without cause. However, the biggest concern in any professional’s employment agreement is a non-competition covenant. Most folks just call it a “non-compete.” As a lawyer, my profession is not allowed to have noncompete agreements that restrict clients from their lawyers when they leave a law firm. Supposedly, this is because everyone should have their own choice of a lawyer. But why isn’t that the same for doctors? It seems much more important to have a physician you trust than a lawyer, and I’m supposed to be biased! Regardless, these are commonlyignored clauses in employment agreements that lay dormant until you decide it’s time to leave the practice. At that point, you’ll scramble to see what patients you can take with you, what other practices you can join, and whether or not you’re going to get sued when you leave. In Missouri, non-compete agreements are disfavored in the eyes of the law. But this does not mean they are unenforceable. When an employer takes the time to provide training and expertise to its employees, as well as expending resources to
Blake I. Markus, JD Managing Partner, Carson & Coil P.C.
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