How hospitals are fighting to keep their former doctors from seeing patients
Doctors are pushing back against the growing use of noncompete agreements in medicine, a practice they say is putting patient care in jeopardy.
David Lankford, an Indiana pediatrician who specializes in treating critically ill children, says he decided to leave his job at Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne after it laid off a group of pediatricians, causing the number of patients he was seeing to increase more than fourfold.
But when Lankford took a job last year at nearby Parkview Health, his new employer was threatened with a lawsuit by his former employer, who alleged he had violated a noncompete clause in his contract, according to court records. Now, he’s months into a legal battle over whether he can continue taking care of patients in Fort Wayne.
“There is a shortage of physicians who do the subspecialty work that I do in Fort Wayne,” said Lankford in a written response to questions. “I believe many critically ill children and their families would have to travel significant distances at significant hardship to get access to care.”
Lankford is among a handful of doctors who are fighting back in court against the increasing prevalence of noncompete agreements, which often prevent a doctor from seeing patients for one to two years within a geographic region if they are fired or quit their job. While employers say the agreements are necessary to protect the investment they make in recruiting, marketing and supporting their doctors, physicians argue the provisions can harm patients by restricting access to care and risk discouraging doctors from speaking out about unsafe or unethical conditions.
“We have seen these noncompetes increase exponentially over the last several years, and it really goes against the very ethos of medicine,” said Omar Atiq, president of the American College of Physicians. “It takes awhile for physicians to start really knowing their patient, not just the disease for which they come but the patient themselves, and to just sever that relationship is a big blow.”
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