Do any of these sound familiar?
Your group’s been courting facility X across town as an additional service site. Then you learn that one of your partners, through an entity she controls, has been covering it for the last six months.
Or how about the opposite? When Dr. Y was admitted to your group as a full partner, he agreed to turn over his contract at facility X to the group as of the end of the calendar year. New Year’s Day, Mother’s Day, and finally Father’s Day come and go and yet Dr. Y refuses to follow through on his commitment.
Breaches of fiduciary duty and of contractual commitment within medical groups occur every day. The question is, are those duties enforced?
If they’re not enforced, what signal is being sent to the rest of the group?
If they’re not enforced, is it because you think it’s too expensive to do so? If that’s the case, what costs are you considering? Do they include your group’s future?
There are many ways to prohibit purely self interested conduct, that is, self interested conduct that is not tied to the group’s self interest. These range from placing physicians into categories that, by law, result in the creation of fiduciary duties, to specific contractual provisions.
But just as a 500 page contract is no more binding then a few scribbles on the back of a napkin if it is not enforced, periodic attestations and periodic audits of outside interests can be seen as sticks signaling that there will be a price to pay for violation.
What signal is your group sending?
