Your medical group’s most important assets, its physicians and other providers, walk out the door each night.
What are they carrying with them?
Take the Viceroy group (not its real name), for example. Yes, literally take it. At least that’s what several of its owners did when they jumped ship to a competitor which then displaced Viceroy as the holder of its exclusive contract.
It’s great to develop team spirit and camaraderie to hold a group together. But it’s not enough to rely on it to protect your group’s sensitive data and strategies.
Trade secret provisions must be incorporated into your group’s services agreements and its partnership/shareholders agreements. But for those provisions to be effective, trade secrets must actually be guarded and closely held.
In states where they are enforceable, use covenants not to compete. In jurisdictions where those covenants are not enforceable (and even where they are), other restrictions, some common and others proprietary, can be used to dissuade a group physician from leaving to compete.
What’s your group’s practice worth? Make the investment to protect it.
