President Joe Biden took his first major step to deliver on his 2020 campaign promise to curtail non-compete agreements when he signed the Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy on July 9. The order, which is wide-ranging in scope, represents a multipronged approach to encouraging greater competition and economic growth by making it easier for workers to change jobs, among other objectives.

Employers in all professions, particularly the medical profession, have sought to use non-compete agreements and restrictive covenants to protect their proprietary information by preventing employees from working for competitors in a specific geographic area for a limited amount of time. The position of hospitals and medical practices is—why should we help train a doctor and improve his skills, give the doctor access to our patients, purchase equipment on his or her behalf—only to have the doctor leave (or be fired) to open up a competing business?