"We'd like to offer you the position."
When you're job searching, that phrase is cause for celebration. But don't get too swept up in the moment. And whatever you do, don't sign a contract without paying attention to its fine print.
Emergency physician Gary Katz learned that lesson the hard way.
When he and his wife decided to move from Virginia to Ohio to raise their family, he was greeted with an unexpected sendoff from his employer.
"I learned that I was responsible for the tail coverage," Katz says. "It was not an issue I had paid attention to at the time I signed the contract."
But the check he had to sign as a result — to the tune of $10,000 — did get his attention.
"I felt disappointed in my own lack of preparation," he says.
Katz, who is the current emergency department medical director at Memorial Hospital Union County in Marysville, Ohio, doesn't blame his former employer for his omission. Instead, he blames it on his youth and inexperience. It was his first employment out of residency, and he says, he didn't follow the proper precautions.
"I didn't do my homework on the front end and so I didn't like writing the check, but I knew it was my responsibility to do so."
Things might have been different, he says, if he had a healthcare attorney review the contract.
"I think had I made that investment upfront they could have pointed out that outstanding risk so that it could have been a more calculated endeavor rather than one left to chance."
Your potential employer, like Katz's former employer, is probably not trying to trap you in a bad contract, but they do value their interests over yours — and your employment agreement will reflect that. It's critically important to understand what you're signing, and why you're signing it. Otherwise, you could lose out on time and money.
To help, here's our guide to successfully navigating the contract review process — and to avoiding major missteps along the way.
Consider retaining an attorney
You wouldn't buy a house without a proper inspection. Your employment is just as big of an investment: treat it that way. These contracts are all about the details, San Antonio-based health law attorney Jim Kelso says. A lawyer will pick up on the nuances of a contract that a physician won't.
"For the major terms of the offer a physician is going to know exactly what's reasonable for their practice," he says. "They know what their friends have gotten ... they have a pretty good understanding of what general flavor the contract should have. What they don't understand are some of the details that begin to tip the scale over from a reasonable offer to an unreasonable offer."
Unfortunately, that scale is tipped more than you might think. Kelso says about 30 percent of contracts he reviews need amendments, and 70 percent require clarifications.
"You want both parties to understand what the deal is," he says. "And most specifically you want to understand what the deal is not."
