The landscape for physician non-competes is shifting, and practices are feeling the impact. In this episode, hosts Brad and Michael share the story of a top Texas plastic surgeon whose thriving practice relied on strict agreements to retain talent. When new physician non-compete laws limited what employers could enforce, he faced tough choices: how to protect his practice, retain talented surgeons, and stay competitive in a changing market. Tune in to learn how recent legal changes impact non-compete enforceability, what alternative strategies can help safeguard your practice, and how to retain top talent without putting your business at risk.
Listen to the full episode using the player below, or by visiting one of the links below. Contact ByrdAdatto if you have any questions or would like to learn more.
Transcript
*The below transcript has been edited for readability.
Intro: [00:01] Welcome to Legal 123s with ByrdAdatto. Legal issues simplified through real client stories and real-world experiences, creating simplicity in three, two, one.
Brad: [00:13] Welcome back to Legal 123s with ByrdAdatto. I’m your host, Brad Adatto, with my co-host, Michael Byrd.
Michael: [00:19] As business attorneys for health care practices, we meet a lot of interesting people and learn their amazing stories. This season’s theme is The Business of Medicine Today. Gone are the days of grandpa’s medical practice with paper charts and old-school treatments. Brad, we’re going to confront the business and health care issues faced by the modern medical practice.
Brad: [00:42] Michael, I’m feeling like we’re missing something here. I think we need to get back to movie talk. Are you going to bring that back today?
Michael: [00:50] No, and, I think you’ve just scarred me with all your mascot talk, where I’m actually open to movie talk. But instead of bringing up an old movie I do have something that was a big deal, back in the ’90s and into the 2000. You actually mentioned this in a prior episode, a while back, but I’ve been meaning to do a deep dive to discover whatever happened to the Darwin Awards.
Brad: [01:16] Yes, I did mention it, because the Darwin Awards were awesome. And for those not familiar, the Darwin Awards is kind of a tongue-in-cheek, unofficial, honor, recognized to individuals who supposedly are improving the human gene pool by accident and accidentally eliminating themselves or becoming sterilized through acts of extreme stupidity. These acts often involve bizarre mishaps or just blatant disregard for their own safety, and others actually, Michael. There is a Darwin Awards website that actually tracked these highlights or lowlights, depending on how you look at it, that, people had contributed to the evolution of mankind by removing themselves from the, reproductive pool. It can be very dark humor, people.
Michael: [02:01] Yes, it is. It, was just a huge part of our culture back in the, ’90s and 2000s. So I, went to AI to get some help to figure out what happened to it, and here are a couple things I learned. First, the website does still exist though the yearly announcements have slowed down. And then second, there is a modern spin-off called the AI Darwin Awards, and this version mocks spectacularly bad corporate or personal decisions involving AI.
Brad: [02:39] Well, that fits nicely with our theme of The Business of Medicine Today. Is that now, like, the Darwin Awards of AI today?
Michael: [02:49] Yeah, I mean I did. I scrolled the modern version a little, but, I just kept wanting to go back to the OG Darwin Awards website, and I had these memories of these stories, and so that’s actually where I spent my time.
Brad: [03:06] All right. What did you discover?
Michael: [03:08] Well, the website looks like an early 2000 website still. It has not been updated.
Brad: [03:14] All right.
Michael: [03:14] And while the design is, I guess, saying it nicely, old school, the stories are still gold.
Brad: [03:21] Well, a good story, Michael, is timeless, regardless, I guess, how pretty the website is.
Michael: [03:27] Yes. So I found one, a, recent winner from 2017.
Brad: [03:33] Okay.
Michael: [03:34] That’s recent, because that’s how infrequently they award them these days but the title of the story was “Forklift Around and Find Out.”
Brad: [03:44] Oh, I approve. I’m not sure if it’s a dad joke or not, but it’s a spin-off of FAFO.
Michael: [03:49] Yes. So this story took place in Japan, and this was a failed lesson in logistics. Now, Brad, you’re a details guy, right?
Brad: [03:58] Very much.
Michael: [03:59] Well, you’ll like this. So a worker had to solve a problem.
Brad: [04:03] Right.
Michael: [04:03] He needed to change a light bulb in a warehouse, and the light bulb was 10 meters overhead.
Brad: [04:11] Okay?
Michael: [04:11] From the ground.
Brad: [04:12] All right.
Michael: [04:12] And so the worker needed to solve how to get to the light bulb to change it. Well, there was a forklift that was in the warehouse, and he had a coworker try to lift him up, but unfortunately, that only got him up to 2.5 meters and he needed to get to 10.
Brad: [04:30] Okay.
Michael: [04:30] So not close enough.
Brad: [04:31] All right.
Michael: [04:32] Well, they also noticed that the warehouse had some wooden pallets.
Brad: [04:36] Oh.
Michael: [04:36] Yes. So they thought, “Why don’t we stack the wooden pallets on the forklift to then lift him up high enough to reach the light bulb?” So he would be standing on the wooden pallets that were supported by the forklift. Does that make sense?
Brad: [04:53] Yes.
Michael: [04:53] Well, do you have a guess as to how many wooden pallets were needed to be able to lift this employee to the required height?
Brad: [05:01] No, I have no idea, but this sort, of felt like a joke, like how many guys at a factory does it take to change a light bulb kind of thing?
Michael: [05:08] Yes. Yeah, well, it’s, not a joke, Brad.
Brad: [05:11] Oh, it’s not.
Michael: [05:11] There’s 37 wooden pallets they stacked on. Yes.
Brad: [05:16] Oh, no.
Michael: [05:17] And, as the employee was being lifted on this rickety stack of 37 pallets, the stack collapsed.
Brad: [05:26] Oh, no.
Michael: [05:27] The concluding sentence to the, Darwin Award was, “Our unfortunate winner died in the wreckage, ironically reaching a higher plane than anticipated.”
Brad: [05:39] Oh, wow. Okay, a couple of follow-up thoughts real quick. First, I didn’t realize that Darwin Awards was international, kind of cool. Second, it could be most of the time because the awards are like, whenever I read the story, it’s always kind of started off with, “hold my beer while I try this.” so maybe that’s why I was kind of surprised with the international one, but-
Michael: [06:00] There’s a high percentage of, males that are winners of the, Darwin Awards.
Brad: [06:04] I can see that. All right, well, Michael, we’ve, we, we’ve learned about the Darwin Awards, so let’s jump into today’s story and figure out what’s going on.
Michael: [06:11] Okay. Our story today starts with a single owner plastic surgery practice in Texas. We will call the owner Dr. Darwin.
Brad: [06:21] Okay. Is this story where Dr. Darwin will win an award named after himself?
Michael: [06:28] No, Brad, not that literal.
Brad: [06:30] Okay.
Michael: [06:30] I was going mostly for the low-hanging fruit when coming up with a name, so it’s very easy there.
Brad: [06:37] Got it.
Michael: [06:37] But I will say this: our doctor is incredibly business savvy and would definitely be a survivor in the evolution process of the modern plastic surgery practice.
Brad: [06:48] Okay, I think you actually stuck the landing there. I’ll allow it. I don’t know how you would, connect our client to Charles Darwin, but okay.
Michael: [06:56] I’m, I’m feeling, pretty proud of myself there.
Brad: [06:59] All right.
Michael: [06:59] Okay, so I mentioned that Dr. Darwin was business savvy. His model was a high-revenue practice built around a handful of employed physicians for the surgical part of his practice. Dr. Darwin is incredibly strategic, and he’s always brainstorming on how to grow and protect his practice from various scenarios. we will call his practice Evolve Plastic Surgery.
Brad: [07:26] Ooh, Darwin, Evolve, you’re kind of on a roll right now. Good, job, Michael. That actually sounds actually like a real aesthetic or wellness practice name. For our listening audience, just to be clear, this is not related to any practice or any other one that has Evolve in it. It‘s just a made-up name that Michael Byrd came up with.
Michael: [07:43] Yeah, just tracking on the old Darwin thing. All right. Dr. Darwin really focused on retention strategies for his employed physicians. I know we’vetalked a little bit about that in a recent episode but his vision, ultimately is to sell to private equity.
Brad: [08:00] Okay.
Michael: [08:00] And so he has been hesitant to make another physician an owner, and so Dr. Darwin has always been hardwired to protect his practice. So Evolve Plastic Surgery has a heavy stick approach to the employment agreements to lock them in.
Brad: [08:21] Yeah, and we’ve actually talked about the stick and carrot in a lot of shows over the time, I think even this season, too. As a reminder for our audience members who don’t really know this, the carrot emphasizes on incentive, is like strong culture, and flexibility, and the schedules, the staffing one with great benefits and other career opportunity advancements, while the stick focuses on creating barriers. Restrictive covenants tend to come to the top of the mind. The stick also involves using consequences like reprimands, or demotions, or poor reviews, which, unfortunately, in the stick approach can foster resentment, disengagement, and rather just true, unmotivated individuals. But let’s be clear, the expectation, accountability, can be a short-term win, and a long-term play.
Michael: [09:11] Yeah. So Evolve Plastic Surgery has some of the heavier stick-type clauses in their employment agreements.
Brad: [09:19] Okay.
Michael: [09:19] And it’s not just for South Texas, which is the region they’re located, but was, really a heavy stick for even what you’ll see nationally. So in that top 5% of really restrictive contracts, and, if we went through a list of all the stick options, Dr. Darwin has a souped-up version of all of them in his agreements.
Brad: [09:45] Well, and for medical practices, understanding the, labor market, understand that depending on what type of contract you have, that’s going to directly affect your recruitment, and stability, and long-term, practice viability. When an employer contract like this one is all stick and no carrot, and, like, again, having, like, an aggressive non-compete, it can actually create downstream risk well beyond that individual physician that you’re having sign it. Off-market contracts is what they call it often, but it makes it harder to recruit doctors, because they’ll talk to each other, Michael. They’ll compare offers, they’ll share information. They, can easily benchmark stuff that’s happening, especially now with the, chat bots and all the AI stuff that’s helping them look at contracts, and that can become very toxic for you to try to recruit another person. I mean, I guess the bottom line if we are really thinking about it, Michael, is that the contracts that ignore market, how the market is shifting, evolving and, that could be a liability to attract and retain physicians, which will obviously threaten long-term stability.
Michael: [10:49] Yeah, I meanyou’re absolutely right, and Dr. Darwin has faced some recruiting headwinds because of this and clearly had doctors, especially doctors that had multiple options, choose to go elsewhere, and then had some doctors that did the old signing blindly thing that, that have come and gone. but let’s, for the sake of understanding, what are the stick options, let’s go through the stick clauses that Dr. Darwin used in his contract, because it represents the full spectrum of what you’ll see or what you could use. So let’s start with the basics, Brad.
Brad: [11:37] Okay.
Michael: [11:37] His contract has a non-disclosure clause.
Brad: [11:40] Oh, you know, audience members, a non-disclosure clause, they’re pretty much in almost every agreement of some sort. A lot of times it, says NDA, which is what you know it as, but doesn’t mean it’s always going to be in a contract. So what does it, at a very high level, what does that mean? It means kind of the whole “what happened in Vegas stays in Vegas” rule, kind of concept. The idea is that, the core of a non-disclosure clause is that stuff has to remain confidential and requires parties to keep that information confidential. So your typical, employment agreement, you might see things like business plans or financial data, patient or, client information, or trade secrets, pricing. All those things that aren’t really there for public consumption is, what you look at in your typical NDA clause. And I was kind of hinting at this earlier, but it could be in your employment agreements, it could be independent contractor agreements, operating agreements, even leases, and, we’ve talked about this in other episodes, Michael, non, quote-unquote, “binding” letters of intent.
Michael: [12:40] Yeah, I mean, to your point, almost every physician signs an, NDA, and whether it’s in the employment agreement or it’s called a confidentiality clause or a separate provision, you can expect that this type of stick will be in there that you’re going to not disclose which, the secret sauce. So let’s move on to the next stick that he has in there, and I want you to talk about this, Brad. He had, Dr. Darwin had non-solicitation of employees and patients, clause.
Brad: [13:14] Man, I’m getting all the fun vocabulary terms. Thank you, Michael. For those not familiar, a non-solicitation clause is another version of this, you can leave, but you can’t take the furniture and staff with you on your way out. That’s kind of the, general way of thinking about it. It can be another tool that they use, as you said, from a, covenant to protect you so that when the practice is training you up, you’re not going to leave with their employees and patients or potentially their business partners when the relationship ends. The catch to this is it really is state by state as to the enforceability of it, and the idea is, generally speaking, most courts don’t mind them as much as they used to, because they like the idea of that when you leave, you just can’t go back in and raid that former practice and take everything out. Now, again, it’s very state by state, people. And sometimes you’ll see things in there that goes a little bit further, where you can never solicit your patients or outside vendors or other referral sources. That gets a little more nuanced, whether or not that’s going to be, I mean, that would obviously be more scrutinized, in a typical restrictive covenant kind of concept. And finally, I mean, the idea behind it is kind of funny, it’s not as restrictive as an NDA, right? But Michael, it’s actually not nearly as bad as a non-compete.
Michael: [14:35] Yeah, to, your point, Brad, I think that the, non-solicitation traps are… I think there’s a difference between employees and patients, number one as far as how courts view it. And then reading actually what it says, I mean, truly a non-solicit, versus a non-solicit that’s actually more than that because of the way it’s worded. but yeah, so then that kind of dovetails us into kind of the biggest stick that you’ll see in the contract is non-competes.
Brad: [15:13] Yeah.
Michael: [15:14] And so, of course, Dr. Darwin had a robust non-compete.
Brad: [15:18] Robust?
Michael: [15:18] Yes. And so I’ll talk a little bit about that, since you’ve been doing the heavy lifting for a minute. Generally speaking, non-competes, there’s a lot of misinformation out there. We’ve done a lot of episodes on, “Are non-competes enforceable?” etc. There’s a time where the, there was a rumor that the federal government was going to ban non-competes nationwide. there was a lot. We actually talked about that in, a few episodes, and, that’s not the case.
Brad: [15:53] Right.
Michael: [15:54] That’s, not in place. So now you’re really kicked into state law, and this is an area of law that has been changing rapidly, really since that whole federal ban thing came in place, it just really prompted a lot of state adjustments. but generally speaking, if you are in a state that bans non-competes for physicians,they’re going to have to be a reasonable restraint on trade, and they’re going to be looking at the, amount of time, how many years are you, prohibited from competing with that practice? What’s the geographic reach where you are not allowed to compete with the practice after you leave? And then, what’s the scope of what you’re not allowed to do? And, and so that framework is a part of most non-compete analysis, but then you have nuance in each state, and we’ll actually, little, foreshadowing, talk a little bit more about Texas here momentarily.
Brad: [16:54] Yeah, we’ll definitely get deeper into Texas in a little bit because you had just mentioned that things do shift, and, an important element I know we can probably talk about more, because this will apply to Dr. Darwin’s practice, but Michael’s point’s is really important is that people are building, these restrictive covenants, the stick approach, and you have to be constantly thinking about the, shifts that’s happening with the states. But maybe you can talk about some of the less common ones that could be there also, Michael.
Michael: [17:22] Yeah, his agreement did not allow, for example, a physician to take their before and after pictures with them, unless their new practice was in another state. So that was a very specific stick clause that, that Dr. Darwin included in his employment agreements.
Brad: [17:45] And for those not familiar, plastic surgery, dermatology, med spa practices, I mean, before and after pictures are the lifeblood of your practice. It’s demonstrating how good a patient can and cannot look. You drop them on your socials, your website, you name it, right? So it’s an important element of attracting new clients. And early on, a lot of employment agreements, the way they were written, it had a general, going back to the, NDA or a trade secret, all that information, the before and after pictures, fall into the patient medical record, and the patient medical record must be maintained and owned by the practice. There, it’s the medical record custodian. And so you had this friction moment where young doctors or, nurse practitioners, PAs, when they’re leaving a practice, they wanted to take their before and after pictures, but contractually they were not allowed to do that. And so that’s the friction, is, one, practice owned it, how
Brad: [18:41] Can I have the right to then leave with that? And if you are the provider and you do have it in the contract, understand there’s still an additional issue, which is based on state privacy and HIPAA, that you still would need the patient’s consent. So there’s a lot to unpack on that. But going back to your statement, it was very common that people just had it buried, and they didn’t realize until when they started leaving that they couldn’t take their before and after pictures.
Michael: [19:06] Right. So let’s talk about one more stick. Dr. Darwin, requires a physician who leaves, regardless of the reason, to pay for a tail policy.
Brad: [19:17] Yes, and tail policy, they have lots of different names: extended endorsement, coverage, tail coverage. I mean, there’s, a lot of different verbiage out there. But ultimately, what it means is when a physician leaves a practice, they need to have some type of insurance that covers them. Now, I won’t get into the whole occurrence versus claims-made talk, but let’s just keep it as simple as possible. In your typical physician employment agreement, when someone leaves, there’ll be a whole section on what’s supposed to happen post-termination, and, part of that is that someone needs to buy that tail. Generally speaking, the physician is going to be the person who is going to be required to buy that tail. Now, are there exceptions? Absolutely. Some employment agreements say, “If you stay here for a certain number of years, we’ll cover it,” or, “If you terminate you, the physician, for a cause we’ll cover it.” So there, just different, different ways to look at that, but it’s not unusual, to see that. You also might hear nose policy, and a nose policy means when you leave, that your new employer is paying for it, so it’s a nose versus tail. But either way, very common. It should not be a surprise to anyone, either a practice or to the employer, as to who’s paying for it, because that’s, You’re talking about on some unmet expectations.
Michael: [20:33] Right.
Brad: [20:33] That’s pretty bad stuff.
Michael: [20:35] Well, I think as you can see, Brad, Evolve Plastic Surgery and Dr. Darwin wanted to make sure that physicians would not evolve to another practice.
Brad: [20:45] Nice play on words there, Michael. Okay. We’re getting a good picture of this Evolve physician employment agreement, and it’s, very employer-friendly, not employee-friendly. usually our stories have something that just happens. We’ve talked about this before. What went wrong, or did something go wrong?
Michael: [21:01] It, in a way, yes, something went wrong. Something changed is probably the better way to say it. Texas passed a new non-compete law in, 2025, that was going to force Dr. Darwin to evolve the way he approached his non-compete stick.
Brad: [21:20] Okay. Well, Michael was hinting to this earlier, and we were kind of talking about it, but I guess I’ll jump into it now. For those who don’t know, in September 1st of 2025, 2025, Texas did pass a new law that modifies, or using Michael’s word of the day, evolved the non-compete statute that applies to physicians. Now, there’s already been a statute in there in place, but now the. it changed it to be more restrictive, for practices as to what they can put in. So I’m going to keep it from the very basic level. There’s four major changes, a Texas practice should be focused on. One, it clarified that the radius, as to Michael said earlier, it used to be a reasonable restriction, now must be five miles of the primary practice location. So that’s a huge shift, especially for the employers that have multiple locations and would have up to, like, 25 miles. Then it used to be, and again, reasonable duration, was what Michael said, now it must be one year or 12 months, depending on how you want to look at it, but that’s it. They can’t be two, three, four, five years. It’s only one year. Again, this is for employment contracts only. It also puts a cap on the buyout clause. So in Texas, there’s a buyout clause that’s required to be in it, and it used to be unknown. It had to be reasonable, so that one-times salary or two-times salary or three-times salary, and the courts have clarified, no, it can’t be more than one year amount of earned income by that physician. Again, that you’ll have to kind of I won’t get too deep in that. And finally, the last piece, which is that, that it can void the non-compete if it’s terminated without good cause. So this is all. And that’s a completely new clause. How the courts will look at these kind of factors will be a big issue, Michael, but this, that’s the kind of super high-level summary of those four major changes.
Michael: [23:01] Right. And so Dr. Darwin had called me in July, so, less than 60 days from this change, and he, wanted to amend the employment agreement of one of his more tenured physician employees to change the compensation in a good way, to give him a raise-
Brad: [23:19] That’s nice. That’s a carrot.
Michael: [23:22] To, make sure the latest sticks were added to this, five-year-old contract, so he really wanted to make sure it was robust on the stick.
Brad: [23:33] I’m guessing this is you and he discovered that the new law was going to affect his stick approach.
Michael: [23:40] Exactly. Let’s go to break and talk about the legal considerations with this development and what happened with Dr. Darwin and Evolve Plastic Surgery.
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Brad: [24:23] Well, welcome back to Legal 123s with Byrd & Adatto. I’m your host, Brad Adatto, with my co-host, Michael Byrd. Now, Michael, our theme this season is The Practice Of Medicine Today, and we’re really focusing on a lot of different things, but today we’re hitting the stick approach on physician employment, contracts, and, I guess we talked about carrots before, but let’s just kind of jump back to where we left off. what did you discuss with Dr. Darwin when he asked for an amendment to the employment agreement, besides trying to duck for cover?
Michael: [24:54] Yeah. Well, there were two levels to the conversation. We first talked about how the new law, well, that there was a new law and that it was going to impact his current non-compete. And so I told him about the new law. He was not pleased, as you might imagine. I also discussed some nuance to the application of the new law and how old non-competes could be grandfathered for a time.
Brad: [25:22] Yeah, so this is where it gets confusing, audience members, is this new, Texas law, the way it’s written, is that for a moment in time, although the law passed September 1st, 2025, if the contract, is still viable, meaning that the, non-competes still viable, so long as it hasn’t renewed, and that sounds weird, right? So meaning that if you haven’t had a renewal clause and you had a long-term agreement that doesn’t renew for a long time, that non-compete, as written in the contract, is still fine. However, if someone signs it on September 1st, 2025, it has to be, meet the new rules. So let’s get back to where he is. He has a contract that’s there. The, moment a contract renews now, either automatically or otherwise, it now needs to be, following this new, statute, which is the, limitations we just discussed. And of course, the statute really doesn’t define “renewal,” quote-unquote, but this is where employers are really facing, an issue, especially with most contracts, as they were built, always had auto renewal clauses, which then automatically triggers this new statute applying.
Michael: [26:34] Yeah, exactly. And so his contract, just coincidentally, the term was August of each year, and so what we discussed was that if he did not amend this agreement, he could buy almost a full year of keeping that current heavy non-compete in place.
Brad: [26:53] Okay, well, that sounds interesting. You mentioned two levels of conversations. That was level one. Let’s go to level two.
Michael: [27:01] Well, we discussed adding a new type of stick which you know he likes that.
Brad: [27:06] Yeah, he does. It’s a shiny new stick.
Michael: [27:09] Yes, so we, talked about strategy to protect around this inevitable diluted non-compete that he was going to have to deal with. And, and so we discussed the very on-brand term, trap agreements.
Brad: [27:24] It’s a trap.
Michael: [27:25] These are called training repayment agreement provisions. And the idea behind these agreements is, as a stick in the employment agreement, that the employee in the practice, will say that they’re providing, or they do provide training to the employee, and that there’s a financial penalty if the employee leaves, and they have to make a repayment to the practice for that training. And so, like I said, it becomes a financial penalty to dissuade the doctor from leaving.
Brad: [27:56] Yeah, and this has been an interesting area of law, audience members, because this, again, is going to be state-driven, where can you have these types of, traps inside of a contract? And recently, at least in a Dallas Court of Appeals decision, did enforce, a trap, which actually made an employee pay $20,000 in training costs after leaving an employee, employer. And some highlights real quick is that the trap can be enforced even when the non-competes are restricted, because Texas courts treat them as ordinary contract provisions, not restraints of trade, which is, again, interesting from that perspective, but that’s , falling into a different area. Courts also upheld repayment obligations tied to actual employer-funded training, especially obligations that triggered, by voluntary or early departure by that employee, so that’s another factor. And the employer increasingly was using, traps as a substitute for non-competes, and that, and it seemed to be, in the court’s mind, fine, because it was a financial incentive, meaning they could still go work somewhere else, but it’s a different type of tool they’re using. Then last, is this, the repayment process was, it needed to be clearly defined, documented, so that the employee understood, the impact it would have when they left. So I guess, the one-size-fit-all isn’t. You have to be very careful if you are putting these into your agreements. I think in this case, they had to evaluate the exit costs independently of any non-compete enforcement, because that, they didn’t want it to, the value of a buyout versus this had to be completely different than a typical non-compete, because otherwise, that could be voidable.
Michael: [29:43] All right. Well done, Brad.
Brad: [29:44] All right, we’re almost out of time, Michael close us out. What happened to Dr. Darwin?
Michael: [29:50] Yeah, it was really fascinating. He actually, through this conversations, started softening on his stick approach because he was facing these headwinds with recruiting. And, and so he kind of leaned in and decided, well, he didn’t even like these five-mile non-competes, so he just got rid of the non-competes.
Brad: [30:10] What?
Michael: [30:11] Yeah. He kept a lot of his other sticks.
Brad: [30:12] Okay.
Michael: [30:13] But progress has been made towards getting closer to a market value contract.
Brad: [30:18] He evolved.
Michael: [30:20] There you go. Mic drop.
Brad: [30:22] Well, Michael, well done. Next Wednesday’s show, we’re back as we continue down this journey of The Business Of Medicine Today, when we bring on our new partner, Grace Lee, and discuss employee handbooks.
Brad: [30:33] Thanks again for joining us today, and remember, if you liked this episode, please subscribe, make sure to give us a five-star rating, and share with your friends.
Michael: [30:42] You can also sign up for the ByrdAdatto newsletter by going to our website at byrdadatto.com.
Outro: [30:49] ByrdAdatto is providing this podcast as a public service. This podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast does not constitute legal advice, nor does it establish an attorney-client relationship. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by ByrdAdatto. The views expressed by guests are their own, and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please consult with an attorney on your legal issues.

