Health care review

NOTE:

Chapman Law Group DOES NOT represent licensed healthcare professionals in employment law matters such as Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), retaliation/wrongful discharge, workplace harassment, wage/hour, employment discrimination, and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). These are matters for which we recommend you contact a labor and employment law attorney.

Our team of health care attorneys frequently help physicians, practice owners, managers, and other health professionals draft and negotiate healthcare-based employment contracts. We also represent parties during healthcare employment contract disputes.

Conflicts generally arise because of poorly drafted agreements that fail to clearly identify the parties’ responsibilities and expectations. Often, employers use standard employment contracts that may not be ideal for every employment situation. These standard contracts, typically used as a starting point for negotiation, need considerable modification.

Not surprising, healthcare employer-drafted contracts are often written in favor of that employer. Therefore, physicians and other licensed healthcare professionals should fully understand their rights and responsibilities under the contract before executing it.

Our health care attorneys assist physicians and other healthcare professionals with understanding the terms of their healthcare employment contracts. We also review contracts to identify areas of potential conflict that may lead to future litigation. As trained negotiators, we can also broker on behalf of physicians to remove unfavorable terms and add favorable ones to their health care employment contract.

Termination clauses in employer-drafted healthcare employment contracts generally outline the terms in which the employer can terminate the physician prior to the expiration of the contract. Such provisions usually provide that the employer can terminate the agreement at any time “for cause.”

The contract will likely define “for cause” to include any restrictions or limitations on the physician’s ability to practice and participate in Medicare and Medicaid. “For cause” may also include limitations that prevent the physician from fulfilling his/her obligations under the agreement and failure to maintain hospital privileges. The employment contract may provide that the employer can terminate the physician upon occurrence of a “for cause” event.

Our healthcare attorneys can help negotiate to add a notice provision that requires the healthcare employer to provide notice of a deficiency and provide a certain period of time for the physician to correct the deficiency before the physician can be terminated.

Provisions that allow termination “without cause” allow the party to terminate the contract for any reason. Physicians should be aware that these kinds of provisions limit the length of the contract to the period of notice required. In other words, a three-year employment contract that allows the employer to terminate employment without cause, providing they give the physician 90 days’ notice, is really only a 90-day employment contract, not a three-year contract.

Physicians should also pay close attention to whether there is a fee (e.g. reimbursement of moving, training, recruitment expenses, signing bonus) to terminate employment. Often, our attorneys are successful in having such provisions removed.

Physicians should ensure that their health care employment contracts contain a provision that allows the physician to also terminate the contract with or without cause.

While courts may not enforce certain restrictive covenants, these covenants should be removed or reduced whenever possible, to lessen the likelihood of future litigation. If the provision cannot be removed, we often negotiate to restrict the covenant to cases where employment at the healthcare entity is terminated by the…