Physicians, state governments and the Federal Trade Commission are all battling to reform policy surrounding noncompete clauses, which prohibit physicians from seeing patients one to two years within a geographic region if they are fired or quit their job.
Noncompetes are not in the best interest of physicians or patients, according to Thomas Pliura, MD, physician and attorney in Le Roy, Ill., who joined Becker's to discuss why private practices physicians are losing power in healthcare.
Editor's note: This response was edited lightly for clarity and length.
Question: Why don't private practice physicians have more power in healthcare?
Dr. Thomas Pliura: Private practice physicians have lost their power in healthcare because their patient bases have dried up…as the hospital systems have gobbled up the patients through their extensive network of non-physician practitioners, the few physicians who have remained in private practice have been gobbled up.
Additionally, those physicians who left private practice to be bought out by large hospital systems. Virtually all of those doctors are coerced into signing binding noncompete provisions that prohibit these physicians from leaving the employment status to go back to the private practice of medicine. These physicians are led to believe the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, but when they go into an employed setting, that is not always true. But they are handcuffed by these restrictive noncompetes. I hold the opinion that one of the worst things for the public is non-compete clauses. The FTC is looking closely at this subject, and maybe they will pass federal legislation to prevent the use of noncompete provisions in healthcare. They create artificial shortages in medicine. They create monopolies in medicine. They are not in the best interest of patients or the public.