How many times in a given week; month or year, do you think, you acknowledge having received and read legal documents you’ve barely skimmed through — if you even opened what you’re “signing off on” at all?
When you want to read an article online or download an app to your mobile phone or computer, do you even open up and scroll through the “terms and conditions” the website or app creator asks you to agree to (or tells you that you are agreeing to) if you continue?
In completing paperwork at a doctor’s office or healthcare facility, do you actually READ the provider’s HIPAA statement and financial policy? Or do you simply sign the documents?
If you’ve ever purchased a home, how many hours did you spend reading through that pile of documents before signing each one? (Personally, I seem to remember a signature ‘assembly line’, with all parties at the table resisting the prospect of said “closing” costing anyone involved an extra minute at the closing table.)
According to BusinessInsider.com, “If you’ve ever tapped ‘I agree’ to a ‘legal terms and conditions’ agreement after hardly giving it a glance, you’re not alone:
“A Deloitte survey of 2,000 consumers in the US found that 91% of people consent to legal terms and services conditions without reading them. For younger people, ages 18-34, the rate is even higher, with 97% agreeing to conditions before reading…”
Two researchers from disparate universities studied how far consumers could be “conned” into going. They created a fake social-networking site called “NameDrop,” and wrote up a “terms and services agreement” for users to agree to before signing up.
“In the agreement they included the disclosure that users give up their first-born child as payment, and that anything users shared would be passed along to the NSA,” BusinessInsider noted. “A whopping 98% of participants agreed.
“This is an extreme example that existed only in an academic experiment. The real agreements are usually there to protect the company from legal trouble.”
So…to what extent are YOU willing to ‘expose yourself’ to enjoy clinical practice on your own terms?
In his April 5, 2019, blog post about locum tenens contracts, Vladimir Dzhashi, MD (“The Locum Tenens Guy”), cautions, “You may be thinking: I’ve got better things to do with my life than reading the contracts. Wrong! The truth is that you ALWAYS have to look at the contract. Medicine is a risky business, so you want to cover all your bases!”
Meanwhile, TWCI Dahle describes “a typical physician contract” as having 3 main components:
- Job Description — “The more descriptive, the better,” Dahle says, because, “it will dictate where you will work, how many hours a day and days a week you will work, how many patients you will see, what kind of breaks you will get, and how much call you will take.”
- Compensation — the section(s) of the agreement describing what you receive for doing the work described. Noting this includes a salary of some kind, Dahle urges you to “make sure you understand exactly how it is calculated,” suggesting possible bases for calculation including per-shift payment (what if you stay late or do charts from home?), Relative Value Units (RVUs), hours billed, or revenue generated. (For the last 3, — what’s the staff-physician average?)WCI also asks if you’ll be paid as an employee or as an independent contractor. “If [as] a contractor, it will be much easier to open your own retirement plan and acquire your own benefits package,” Dahle writes. “Remember that independent contractors must pay both the employee and employer halves of payroll taxes like Social Security and Medicare, as well as cover their own benefits. That means you need to be paid more as an independent contractor than as an employee for the compensation packages to be equivalent.”
- Termination — What happens if you don’t like the job? What happens if they don’t like you? How much notice must you give and vice versa? What happens if you lose your license or hospital credentials? Under what grounds can they fire you “for cause”?