I share your concerns about a lot of similar projects, but I think this one's an outcomes comparison thing, not…
Morning Headlines 4/24/24
Change Healthcare attack did not result in harm to veteran care, VA says
The Change Healthcare ransomware attack has not resulted in harm to VA patients, though it did delay the filling of prescriptions, most of them refills, for 40,000 veterans.
Oracle is moving its world headquarters to Nashville to be closer to health-care industry
Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison says the company will move its headquarters from Austin to Nashville to be closer to a major center of healthcare.
Serent Capital invests in occupational health IT company Medical Informatics Engineering.
FTC Announces Rule Banning Noncompetes
The FTC votes to ban noncompetes in a ruling that it predicts will lead to the creation of 8,500 new businesses each year.
Seems the FTC ruling on non-competes hits start-ups hardest. All they’ve got are ideas and if staff leave with them and compete, they’ve got even less than those ideas.
That’s what NDAs are for. The people who will benefit the most from declaring these nonsense clauses void is not SV techbros, its the people putting lettuce and hots on grinder rolls at Jimmy Johns which — this is not a joke — has a “non compete” clause that prevents anyone who has worked at a JJs from getting a job at any other store that makes sandwiches within a certain radius. To keep it topical, physicians find themselves unable to find new jobs without moving to another state because of non-competes that are baked into their contracts (ThedaCare and Ascension both have them in some of their hospitals, for example.)
Sounds reasonable, until you look at the Silicon Valley experience. Silicon Valley grew like a weed precisely because employees could leave, not in spite of that. Just look at the experience of Shockley Semiconductor and the ‘Traitorous Eight’. I mean, that HAD to be bad right, they were ‘traitorous’?
Yet Shockley led to Fairchild, Fairchild led to Intel, and Silicon Valley became a phenomenon.
Bigger picture. Non-competes exist to protect companies. Society however, wants to think bigger than that.
And non-competes are abused hundreds of times daily. It is actively ignoring the real-world situation, to try to make this about small business. In fact non-competes were never a problem until the world of business leaders decided to go bonkers and make the janitorial staff sign non-competes. Also the cafeteria staff, the electricians, the massage therapists, and the widget assemblers!
I’m not sure how Change is reconciling these two claims:
“The Change Healthcare ransomware attack has not resulted in harm to VA patients” and
“it did delay the filling of prescriptions…for 40,000 veterans”
Its too early to know whether or not a delay in medication for chronic conditions directly harmed anyone, that usually requires an adverse event and then backing into all of the circumstances contributing to it. We’re probably months out from that data, BUT it seems pretty hubristic declare that delayed access to medication *doesn’t* cause harm to anyone. That’s why they’re on medication — because if they’re not, bad things happen.
(Its me, hi, I’m the spreadsheet nerd, its me)
Big move there by Oracle, which simply HAS to have something to do with Cerner.
Not something so easy to unroll, if Oracle was toying with the idea of cutting Cerner loose!
I always felt bad for former Epic employees who were bound by non-competes.
It is incredibly stressful once you leave the Epic center of gravity. I have spent my ex-epic career wondering if I am in the gray zone or not. I even had a company I worked for acquired by a company I knew was on the non-compete, which then left me wondering what my next move will be. I am sure we will see litigation that pauses this ruling, so I’m not breathing an sighs of relief yet. And let’s not forget, there are still Epic’s refusals to grant userweb access as they see fit.
Yeah i’m not sure this ruling really moves the needle on Epic’s behavior at all, the non-competes were always believed to be non-enforceable and the real concern was Epic using its weight and industry position to force customers/vendors to not hire people they didn’t want them to hire by “refusing to work with those people”
This ruling presumably still doesn’t prevent that behavior, of course all this is likely pending litigation.
The FTC Final Rule very much does prevent that type of anti-competitive behavior. Having a noncompete in everything but name would fall under unfair methods of competition as discussed on p.54, p.77-78
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/noncompete-rule.pdf
“Pursuant to the term “functions to prevent,” the definition of non-compete clause also applies to terms and conditions that restrain such a large scope of activity that they function to prevent a worker from seeking or accepting other work or starting a new business after their employment ends, although they are not expressly triggered by these specific undertakings. …if an employer adopts a term or condition that is so broad or onerous that it has the same functional effect as a term or condition prohibiting or penalizing a worker from seeking or accepting other work or starting a business after their employment ends, such a term is a non-compete clause under the final rule.”
Fully expect Epic and many others to fight this tooth and nail in federal court.
The ruling does seem to actually touch on things like UserWeb access
“…the final rule applies to terms and conditions that expressly prohibit a worker from seeking or accepting other work or starting a business after their employment ends, as well as agreements that penalize or effectively prevent a worker from doing the same.”
Unless Epic is going to secretly stop ex-employees from using the UserWeb, it would seem they cannot have a clause to do so because it penalizes accepting work/starting a business. I think Epic folks should feel more enabled by this, and I would hope Epic will see the writing on the wall and move on from this practice.