Little Health Law represents physicians who are considering employment with hospitals or other potential employers. Our physician contract lawyers have represented doctors extensively for many years and can guide you through the intricacies of employment agreements to ensure the best possible outcome for you.
National Physician Contract Lawyers to Protect Your Livelihood
The focus of our law practice is representing physicians, medical practices and other healthcare businesses. We have substantial experience representing healthcare providers in evaluating, drafting and/or negotiating physician employment agreements. Do not jeopardize your livelihood or your future career. Have an experienced physician employment contract attorney review any employment contract before you sign on the dotted line.
How we help doctors considering employment
Our representation of doctors with regard to employment agreements typically involves:
- Letters of intent and pre-drafting considerations
- Evaluation of independent contractor options
- Stark or other self-referral law analysis
- Compensation and expense reimbursement
- Dispute resolution provisions
- Termination and due process provisions
- Non-compete agreements and other restrictive covenants
Tips to Negotiate Your Physician Employment Agreement
We also represent physicians who need to sell an existing medical practice and become employed by the purchasing hospital, private equity, or physician group. A proper employment agreement defines the legal relationship between the physician and his employer. It must clearly and precisely state the parties’ expectations and their respective rights and obligations.
Physician employment agreement lawyers
If you are a doctor considering an employment agreement, our firm can help you avoid mistakes in the contracting process and avoid surprises down the road about compensation and other critical aspects of employment. We help physicians identify critical, long-term personal and professional factors impacted by specific contract language contained in proposed employment agreements and other contractual arrangements presented by hospitals, hospital systems, medical group practices, and other potential employers. Our firm will assist you in negotiating for important contract language that we know protects a physician’s long-term financial and career interests.
While compensation often is a driving consideration for physician review of a prospective employment opportunity, numerous other aspects of the written employment agreement will profoundly impact the physician’s satisfaction and happiness with the arrangement over the long term.
Essential Physician Employment Agreement Tips
Read and understand all provisions of a proposed employment agreement. While it sounds elementary, carefully reading and understanding all aspects of an employment contract is often neglected. Without a true understanding of how all provisions in a proposed written agreement would operate, effective negotiations are not possible for a doctor. Physicians should not blindly accept any sentence in a proposed employment agreement. Most language can and often should be negotiated, to ensure it operates in a mutually fair way. It is critical to understand what the implications of every provision are. Still, reading carefully may not ensure complete understanding. An experienced physician employment contract attorney can ensure you know exactly what you are signing and the present and future consequences.
Know the proposed job. That is, know the job duties as contemplated by the particulars of the proposed written employment agreement (in contrast to what representations are made in general discussions).
- What hours are required? Is there a minimum number of hours or particular hours required under the contract?
- At what location(s) is the physician required to work?
- What marketing, medical education, promotion, and/or administrative duties and services are required and are work relative value units for those activities addressed in compensation provisions?
- What are the specific “on-call” provisions and compensation details for such responsibilities?
- Does the proposed contract require you to consult with other physicians requesting provisional services of the employer?
Obtain proper payment agreement. A typical employment agreement will contain assignment provisions for billing privileges; however, physicians have a legal responsibility for billing accurately. Therefore, your employment contract should allow them the opportunity to review billing claims as needed to ensure the bills are correct. A fair employment contract will also require the employer to indemnify and hold harmless the physician for any violation of the law as a result of the employer’s billing for the physician’s services.
Understand precisely how compensation is determined. Straight salary is increasingly rare. Production-based formulas are intended to incentivize desired physician performance. From the physician’s standpoint, production-based formulas should clearly and precisely articulate the formula and any variables that impact the calculation of compensation. For complex formulas, the physician should make sure that examples are included in the employment agreement. Due to current trends in healthcare reform, compensation models for physicians will to some degree morph from “production” to “value”- based compensation methods as third-party payers experiment with a variety of performance benchmarks or metrics associated with “value,” such as patient satisfaction, quality outcomes, adoption of electronic health records, performing recommended screenings, etc. The movement toward “value” measures by third-party payers is new and experimental. It is essential that the mechanics of the compensation formula be precise and clear and totally transparent.
Obtain adequate liability protection. Professional liability coverage can be “claims made” or “occurrence based.” If a proposed employment agreement provides that the employer will offer claims made malpractice coverage, the physician should consider requesting that the employer obtain (or cover the cost of) “tail” coverage (an extended reporting endorsement that extends coverage beyond the expiration of the policy paid for by the employer).
Preserve professional judgment. Tension created by the role of employee and the independent professional judgment required of doctors is almost inevitable. Physicians must make sure that treatment and referral judgments are always according to the best interests of their patients. When a physician signs a contract of employment, however, contractual provisions that bind the physician will necessarily impose certain restrictions, both express and implicit, upon the physician’s conduct respecting treatment and referrals. It is more than a theoretical possibility that the financial interests that drive a hospital’s inclusion of a contract provision can compete with what is actually in a particular patient’s best interests. Careful analysis and weight should be given to all provisions of a proposed employment agreement that restrict a physician’s judgment.
Plan for the end. All good things will end. A physician’s employment is no exception. In reviewing a proposed employment agreement, good feelings and optimism notwithstanding, an honest, critical assessment of all contract provisions relating to termination of the relationship is essential. Some factors to evaluate are:
- What benefits are forfeited or lost at the termination of employment (bonuses, hospital privileges, retirement contributions)?
- What are the details of non-compete and non-solicitation provisions? Are those provisions reasonably crafted so that you can transition into new employment or private practice in the geographic area desired?
- Does the contract allow the employer to terminate “for cause”? Does it provide you an opportunity to cure deficiencies? Do the contract’s provisions respecting termination ensure the protection of the doctor’s due process rights?
The Future of Non-Competes
One issue that has received a lot of publicity in the last couple of years has been non-competes. Non-compete agreements for medical professionals can restrict physicians, nurses, and other healthcare workers from practicing within a certain geographic area or for a certain period after leaving an employer. This issue is of tremendous importance for physicians because it can limit career mobility and impact negotiation power when changing jobs or starting a practice. However, there has been so much back-and-forth on this issue at the federal and state levels that some misinformation has spread that non-competes are banned.
In Georgia, physician non-competes are still generally enforceable. This is why it is important to either negotiate to eliminate non-competes in the physician employment contract or, if that is not possible, reduce their impact.
On the federal level, the FTC announced a rule banning non-competes. The FTC has officially dropped its appeal of a broad employee non‑compete ban. This means that the proposed rule to bar most non‑compete agreements never took effect, and employers can still use such clauses under existing law.
At the same time, the agency has begun targeted enforcement actions against specific overly broad non‑competes and launched a public inquiry into their effects. This shift reflects a move from a nationwide ban to case‑by‑case antitrust scrutiny of restrictive covenants.
Some states have banned non-competes, and this trend is growing. Therefore, healthcare practices with employees in multiple states must understand the non-competition laws in all states where their employees operate. At the state level in Georgia, there has been movement to ban non-competes. However, nothing has materialized. Therefore, under the Georgia Restrictive Covenants Act, non-competes are generally enforceable.
The Georgia Supreme Court clarified in North American Senior Benefits, LLC v. Wimmer, No. S23G1146 (Ga. 2024) that under the Georgia Restrictive Covenants Act (GRCA), a restrictive covenant does not have to include an express geographic limitation to be enforceable, as long as it is reasonable in geographic scope under OCGA § 13‑8‑53(a). The Court emphasized that the GRCA’s goal is a flexible, more permissive approach to restrictive covenants.
A court decision last year, however, should give employers pause. In All States AG Parts, LLC v. Herzig (Feb. 2025), the Georgia Court of Appeals confirmed that Jeremy Rose’s non-compete couldn’t be enforced and refused to “blue pencil” it under the GRCA. The clause, which barred him from working for a competitor “in any capacity,” was determined to be way too broad. It basically blocked him from any role, even unrelated to his old job. The court noted that even removing the “in any capacity” language would leave vague restrictions on unspecified business activities. As a result, employers are advised to draft non-competes carefully and limit them to specific roles or activities.
Our health law firm is focused on protecting the financial interests of physicians and other healthcare providers.
“Kevin Little [of Little Health Law] represented the Medical Association of Georgia and individual physicians in a matter addressing the abuses of the health insurance industry. Kevin was a pleasure to work with and brought forth legal theories to hold the health insurance industry accountable to physicians and patients. We received outstanding representation from Kevin.” *
– Donald Palmisano, CEO and General Counsel, Medical Association of Georgia.
Our health law firm is AV-rated. We have offices in Atlanta and Augusta, Georgia. Contact us at info@littlehealthlaw.com to schedule a confidential consultation.
DISCLAIMER: Any result this law firm or any physician contract lawyer of this law firm may achieve on behalf of one client in one matter does not necessarily indicate similar results can be obtained for other clients.