President Joe Biden’s push to ban noncompete agreements that limit a worker’s ability to leave their job for a competitor could cause a major shake-up in the health care industry, where the agreements have become pervasive among doctors and nurses.
The Biden administration is in the final stages of issuing a rule that would ban employers across industries from putting provisions in an employment agreement barring workers from moving to a competitor or starting their own enterprise, a move he touted during his State of the Union address last week.
The practice of having employees sign noncompete agreements has become common in the U.S., with the Biden administration estimating that 1 in 5 workers is bound by one. The practice has become particularly prevalent in the health care industry, as large health systems and private equity firms have increasingly bought up group doctor practices and hospital staffing agencies, requiring their new employees to sign broad noncompete agreements, according to interviews with doctors, nurses and medical groups.
“For a lot of health systems nationwide, it is standard practice to make all their nurses sign them,” said Jonah Mainzer, a senior policy adviser for the American Nurses Association. “They’re very common nationwide and it seems to be more common for younger nurses, people who are just breaking into the industry.”
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For doctors and nurses, the agreements often specify a geographic radius in which they're unable to practice medicine for a period of one to two years after they leave or are fired from a job. In some instances, those geographic restrictions can be so broad that they would prevent a doctor or nurse from working in an entire region, requiring them to move to a new city or state or stop practicing medicine for a period of time.
