On August 21, the Denver Post quoted Heather Fox Vickles on Colorado’s new noncompete rules that seek to boost patients’ rights. The following is an excerpt:
The days when a doctor or dentist mysteriously disappeared without sharing a word with their patients could be a thing of the past in Colorado following the implementation of new rules on nondisclosure and non-solicitation agreements.
Companies use noncompete agreements to protect trade secrets and vital information, and non-solicitation agreements seek to prevent departing workers from raiding employees and clients. Colorado’s legislature passed major limits in 2022 on how those agreements can operate. This year, it added rules that will make it much easier for physicians, dentists, therapists and other practitioners to take their patients with them without any fear of retribution.
“If a physician left to open a competing practice, you could still enforce the damages provisions,” said Heather Fox Vickles, a partner in the Denver office of Venable LLP. “That is gone now. They can notify their patients and patients have the right to choose and follow their providers.”
In 2022, Colorado banned noncompete provisions that limited a physician’s right to practice medicine after leaving an employer, say a hospital or clinic. The reforms, however, allowed prior employers to seek “reasonable damages” if a physician left and became a competitor.
Unless a physician was leaving town, there always was a threat that a former employer could pursue damages, which acted as a de facto noncompete clause, Vickles said. Even the fear of having to fight off a former employer was often enough to make a physician go silent and vanish without a trace.
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