Maverick OD's

[PAkev]

Our MD office is vacant 1 day per week (20% of the time) as our doc is in the clinical arena. We would like to bring in an OD once a week on this day to help offset the overhead and improve profitability. Most interested OD's float around to a handful of our independent and chain competitors. I'm sure there are other folks that have OD's which service their competitors as well and am wondering if this has been a conflict of interest in any way and/or what mutual expectations should be spelled out in an agreement.

Helpful advice appreciated

[Johns]

I'm sure there are other folks that have OD's which service their competitors as well...

So long as they are good ODs during the day, I don't care what they do on their own time!;):D

[cocoisland58]

We call them moonlighters. Our local lab has a list of names we have picked from. Of those we have used there were two that fit in wonderfully and those two we use whenever we need a fill in Doc. We don't care who they work for the rest of the time and since they don't mind sharing gossip, all the better. They seem to love us and both of them said they would rather work for us than anywhere else. These are mostly retired guys who float around. No conflict of interest as far as I can tell.

[For-Life]

Our MD office is vacant 1 day per week (20% of the time) as our doc is in the clinical arena. We would like to bring in an OD once a week on this day to help offset the overhead and improve profitability. Most interested OD's float around to a handful of our independent and chain competitors. I'm sure there are other folks that have OD's which service their competitors as well and am wondering if this has been a conflict of interest in any way and/or what mutual expectations should be spelled out in an agreement.

Helpful advice appreciated

As long as they do not dispense in their office, which they should never do.

[Chris Ryser]

Non disclosure agreement...................

...........................am wondering if this has been a conflict of interest in any way and/or what mutual expectations should be spelled out in an agreement.

You can always sign a mutual non disclosure agreement. Look it up at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement

[HarryChiling]

A CNC or Non-Compete clause would be a good idea as well to CYA. Check with a lawyer to see what if this is allowed in your jurisdiction or not and what is an acceptabel limit on both time and area.

[AdmiralKnight]

We have two offices. In both offices, we have atleast one OD who also goes to other offices. In our main office, there are two, who are actually employed by the owner ODs. There's absolutely no issue with them. In our second office, the "floater" OD is actually partial owner. The only issue that's come up is every so often, she'll ask us to remake a set of lenses that were purchased at her other office, but was her patient. Doesn't happen often, but once is too often in my opinion.

[Johns]

Why sweat it? How much could 1 day hurt?

Getting back to the original question...

You have a spot fo an OD one day a week right? It sounds like you need the OD more than they need you.

If I were the OD, I wouldn't sign a non-compete, let alone the fact that you're talking about 1 day of work per week.

How many of the chain competitors are MDs? I would welcome the od, as their association w/ the chains would help your MD business.

[HarryChiling]

If I were the OD, I wouldn't sign a non-compete, let alone the fact that you're talking about 1 day of work per week.

I would say a small percentage would scrutinize the contract to that degree and if they did good ridance they were probably up to something anyway. If they don't sign a non-compete they could open up right next door and inundate your office with request for records to the tune of hireing a staff member to deal with just his records release transactions, not to mention he/she would have the upper had as far as negotiateing the same or better deals on frames and lenses than your office would.

Johns,

Pennsylvania is a whole nother monster and OD's in general don't like independent opticians, so even if the doctor hired were a good guy the influences in the state would be trying to pull him to the dark side.

[peregrinerose]

Our MD office is vacant 1 day per week (20% of the time) as our doc is in the clinical arena. We would like to bring in an OD once a week on this day to help offset the overhead and improve profitability. Most interested OD's float around to a handful of our independent and chain competitors. I'm sure there are other folks that have OD's which service their competitors as well and am wondering if this has been a conflict of interest in any way and/or what mutual expectations should be spelled out in an agreement.

Helpful advice appreciated

I practice in PA, and in 8 years of practice have always worked in more than one location. I am always very straightforward with the people I work for, I tell them where I do fill-in work, and before accept anything new, always run it by the people I work for. It's never been an issue. I tend to prefer it to be one private practice and one corporate place so there's no issues at all with competition as the demographics are completely different.