[hfifjdghu]

This perspective completely evades the actual argument which was that practices behave this way because they're extending access to their client base which is a resource they cultivated themselves and which will almost certainly yield a following the the new applicant.

[riskable]

A client base is not an exclusive resource that only the employer gets to have. If the doctor started a coffee shop and those same clients started going there for their coffee would it be the same? Or perhaps the whole point of such clauses is the very definition of anti-competitive behavior.

Also, if the doctor's patients all like him enough to switch to his private practice when he leaves then clearly they weren't paying the doctor enough. He was worth that many patients!

[swader999]

They could pay doc more if they didn't spend any money on marketing and retention but that would be a lose lose situation, especially as most docs bill money on a per visit basis.

[matheusmoreira]

Complete bullshit. The patients are not "theirs", they are not resources to be traded. The doctor is the one extending services to the practice. They're the ones who benefit from having high quality professionals attending to patients. The practice did not cultivate anything, the doctors practicing there did. Doctor-patient relationships are personal and it is 100% unethical to interfere in them with anticompetitive contracts.