Brian Phillips - Chief Communications Officer, TPPF Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Under the law seven two. Start time you're on Houston's
Born News. Actually, the non compete clauses are getting more
and more enforceable, certainly in the business I'm in in
the radio business and television business. But you know they
still write them up anyway. What about the medical field,
Brian Phillips joins US chief Communications Officer at the Texas
Public Policy Foundation. How big of a problem are non

(00:23):
compete clauses when it comes to the medical community, Brian, Well,
thanks for.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Having me, Jimmy, and they are. They're a big problem.
That's the most important thing is the doctor patient relationship,
and they can they can deeply and profoundly interfere in
that relationship. You know, as you mentioned, there are good
reasons to have non compete clauses, specifically if a company
is investing in specialized training or you know, certainly to
protect their proprietary information. But those kinds of reasons are

(00:49):
much less compelling in the healthcare field, where doctors rarely
receive any kind of specialized training after they leave medical school,
and the most valuable information, of course, is the information
that the doctor has with the patient and that they
leave that you know, that information is not valuable to
the next provider that they that they move on to,
So these non competes and things like that are much

(01:11):
much less compelling. On the other hand, you have a
situation where these non competes oftentimes can can require geographical
boundaries so that the doctor can't practice, you know, twenty
five fifty one hundred miles from from where they used
to practice. Well, that obviously creates a real problem for
the patient if they are going to have to drive,

(01:32):
you know, fifty miles to see their next doctor, it
usually means that they're going to have to switch doctors
and they no longer can can have that doctor. And furthermore,
that the provider is under no obligation to transfer those
records to a new provider or to even tell the
patients that that the doctor has left or where they went.
So there's there's some real issues that really interfere with

(01:53):
the doctor pacer relationship that we.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Need to fit. Yeah, I've had a few few doctors
do that where I just you just find out all
of a sudden they're gone. Nobody knows where they went,
and if you wanted to go see them, they're not
going to tell you where they went. So there you go,
and you know they're not local because they have a
non compete, as you say, And that seems to me
to be one of the biggest problems, especially in areas
where you are trying very hard to make sure you
have enough people practicing medicine if they are part of

(02:18):
a in particular healthcare system, it seems to me it
probably impacts people who are a part or doctors who
are part of a big healthcare system. Then certainly private practice,
that's that's not a problem at all. But how many
doctors are in private practice anymore? Not very many, that's right.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, No, you're absolutely right. And that's really the and
that's really the the insidious underbelly of these kinds of things,
which is it's not even really about protecting their information
or protecting that practice. What they're really trying to do
is handcuff the doctors so that the doctors can't leave,
or that it makes it much more difficult for the
doctors to leave. And there's really no reason for it. Again,

(02:55):
you know, the reasons for non compete are just not
compelling in the medical field. There's no reason for it
because those practices are not losing uh, you know, the
you know, valuable information the way that that other industries
and other other firms might might be so, so it
really is something that needs to get fixed.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
I get the impression that noncompete clauses are on a
legal basis, they're not being enforced the way they used
to be enforced, that it's fairly easy to get out
of them. Is it tougher in Texas to get out
of a noncompete?

Speaker 2 (03:26):
It is, it is tougher. But but also, I mean,
I would agree with you that, you know, it really
just depends on on you know, the veracity of the
or the the aggressiveness of the provider to to enforce it.
What it really does is it just scares the doctors.
It just scares They don't want to have to go through,
you know, a big legal process and have that thing
always hanging over their head in case they're you know,

(03:47):
in case they want to try and open up a
practice inside the geographical boundary or something. They just they
just don't want to have to deal with it. And and
and frankly they shouldn't have to because the most important
part of all of this is making sure that patients
get to see there, making sure their patients get to
keep that doctor patient relationship, and so you know, this
would be something that would make it better for the
patients and the doctors.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
And so we need to address it. Yeah, attorney's piece
is pretty big hammer when you get right down to it. Brian,
thank you very much. Appreciate The chief communications Officer at
the Texas Public Policy Foundation Brian Phillips at seven twenty
seven