Once you pick a doctor in adulthood, and as you get older, there comes a sense of comfortability and trust with it. You tend to stick with the same doctor for years because you know them, they know you, and they know your medical records. But in the world of business, because healthcare is a for-profit industry, many companies have started using non-compete agreements with doctors. In short, it makes it where doctors cannot practice near their old employer.
In most business practice, because you want to protect revenues, the idea of NCA's is smart and usually successful. But in the medical industry, it just creates headaches for the doctor, and especially for the patient. It removes doctors from their service area and removes comfortability from patients when their doctors are forced to leave town.
Brian Phillips of the Texas Public Policy Foundation says these NCA's for doctors force them into geographic boundary requirements.
"If the doctor leaves a practice, they have to go 50 to 100 miles away from where the provider is, which makes it impossible for a lot of patients to continue to see their doctors," he says.
In these NCA's as well, a provider is under no obligation to even tell the patients that the doctor has left, or where they went. The patients get left entirely in the dark, and when they do find their doctor, they are stuck having to travel long distances. If they cannot, they are forced to lose the relationship with that doctor.
So, at least in the healthcare world, these NCA's are more trouble than they are worth for everyone involved.
"The providers are not required to tell the patient the doctor left, or where they went...or to transfer health records," says Phillips. "That can really disturb the patient's well-being, the patients' health...we need to protect that relationship between the doctor and patient."
Texas is one of those states aiming at limiting these NCA's to help people keep their doctors nearby if they do change providers. They have not done so yet, but the fight is coming.
The solution to fixing the problem, besides limiting the NCA's, is pretty basic.
"Just have a requirement the provider lets the patient know that the doctor left, and where they went," Phillips says.
He adds that, according to their research, around 70-percent of Texans agree with limiting these non-compete agreements, and 90-percent agree with providers notifying them of a doctor's departure.
It is all about money, and handcuffing doctors to one spot with no real upside to leaving. That needs to stop, so people can see their doctors they know. But in a grossly over bloated for-profit healthcare system, that is a wish we can only hope comes true.
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