Don’t shred your noncompete yet | Philly Health Insider
And should nursing be a STEM profession?
This week, we break down what a new FTC ban on employment noncompetes means in Philly. Plus, we look at a legal battle tied to a Virtua hospital acquisition, the threat that bird flu poses to our region, and how a local hospital repaired Jon Bon Jovi’s vocal cords.
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— Aubrey Whelan and Abraham Gutman, Inquirer health reporters, @aubreywhelan and @abrahamgutman.
If the Federal Trade Commission’s vote to ban noncompetes goes into effect, it will be a big deal for doctors and many in health care. But that’s a big if.
Physicians from the Philly area told the FTC all about their dislike of these restrictions in the public comment period ahead of the agency’s decision last week.
“If I am to seek another job, I would have to uproot and move my family,” a person who identified as a family physician from Philadelphia wrote to the agency.
“I was effectively claused out of Philadelphia for a year,” another physician wrote, referencing the noncompete clause in her contract.
It doesn’t take much to “clause out” in Philadelphia. Several local physicians told us their noncompetes cover a 5- or 10-mile radius from their place of work for one year. We pulled out a map and found nearly 20 general hospitals in a 10-mile radius around Philadelphia’s City Hall.
So what does the rule change actually mean? Here are the key takeaways from our conversations with legal experts:
Employers couldn’t ask employees to sign noncompetes, with some exceptions, once the rule takes effect.
Some physicians in small private practices might be considered executives, and the rule won’t apply to them.
Some nonprofit employers could be exempt, given that the FTC generally has authority over businesses. But in the rule, the agency makes clear that a nonprofit status alone isn’t a guaranteed exemption. “Each individual circumstance will have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis,” Larry Pockers, a partner at Duane Morris, told us.
The rule should go into effect within a few months. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce already sued in federal court. Legal observers say the fight could go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
You can read more about the FTC rule, and an effort to ban noncompetes in health care in Pennsylvania, in our full story.
(And we want to hear about your experience with noncompetes!)
The latest news to pay attention to
Virtua Health is suing Trinity Health for $12 million in legal fees related to Virtua’s acquisition of the Lourdes Health System. Our colleague Harold Brubaker has the details.
Penn Medicine and Main Line Health have pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and signed onto a voluntary federal program called the Health Sector Climate Pledge. And Jefferson Health is joining another national initiative to tackle the issue.
Who says you can’t go home for surgery? Not Jon Bon Jovi! The glam rocker revealed in a new documentary that he went to Main Line Health’s Lankenau Medical Center in 2022 for a voice-saving operation. (Bon Jovi is technically from New Jersey, but Philadelphia has long claimed him as one of its own, and so do we.)
The big number this week: Zero.
That is the number of cases of bird flu currently circulating in cows (and domestic birds, too) in Pennsylvania.
Concern is rising about H5N1, a strain of avian flu that’s now infecting cattle. A nationwide outbreak began among birds in 2022, and at one point last year, Pennsylvania had more cases than anywhere else in the country.
But since mid-February, Pennsylvania has reported no cases of avian flu in domestic birds and none in cattle, even as H5N1 has infected cattle in eight states. (The closest cases are in Ohio.)
Federal health authorities say it’s unlikely that this strain presents a serious health concern for people. Bird flu rarely spreads from person to person, and it looks like pasteurization can kill the virus in milk. (So avoid raw milk.)
For more on bird flu and how Pennsylvania authorities are looking to keep it out of the state, read Aubrey’s story.
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital received one of the state’s most serious safety warnings after inspectors found that an elderly patient had gone missing from the emergency department after staff failed to routinely check on him this January.
The incident, first reported by our colleague Sarah Gantz earlier this month, was one of four times that state inspectors investigated potential safety problems at TJUH between August 2023 and January 2024. The others were deemed unfounded.
Want a piece of the $1.2 billion that the White House committed to the STEM professions? Good luck if you are a nurse.
Nursing isn’t eligible because many government agencies do not recognize it as a STEM field. Now two Philly-area nursing professors are petitioning for that to change.
Rebecca Love, from Villanova, and Marion Leary of Penn, lead a national coalition that sent a letter this week to the Department of Homeland Security asking to add nursing to its list of STEM degrees.
“All the work that nurses do, both clinically and outside the bedside, that’s all science, technology, engineering, and math,” Leary said.
“It is time that we correctly be classified as such,” Love added.
Read more about why the nurses decided to target DHS first.
Making moves
Michael Stern, Tower Health’s COO, is now also the health system’s president. Tower’s news release said Stern will “maintain the momentum of Tower Health’s turnaround.”
In addition, Kristin Kearney, the current CFO of Tower Health Medical Group, a network of advanced practice providers and primary care and specialty physicians, is also now the CFO of Reading Hospital.
Bulletin board
Explaining the flu vaccine to patients in the emergency department goes a long way towards increasing their likelihood of getting the shot, Jefferson researchers found in a study recently published in NEJM Evidence. Six EDs, including one at Jefferson, participated in the study, which divided more than 700 unvaccinated patients into three groups.
One group watched a video about the flu vaccine and was given a one-page flier, then asked if they would accept a flu vaccine. Another group was simply asked whether they would take a vaccine. A third group was given no information on vaccines at all.
The results? In the video group, 41% of patients were vaccinated within 30 days. In the group asked about the vaccine, 32% got vaccinated. Only 15% of those who received no vaccine information ended up getting the shot. Jefferson researchers say the results make a “strong case” for vaccine education as one of the daily duties in an ED.
That’s all for this week! Aubrey, the most sedentary health reporter in Philadelphia, will not be participating in this weekend’s Broad Street Run, but she is planning to cheer on friends who have spent months training to race through our beautiful city. Calling all runners: we’d love to hear your tips, tricks, and expectations for Philly’s iconic race.
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