Can other folks comment as to whether this actually helps secure a contract? Seems clever, but I'm curious if it's really effective.
Not very effective. Once a group is booted out, all of a sudden you've got 5, 10, 20 or however many ER doctors with no jobs. They may have all signed a piece of paper stating they promise not to go with a new contract group, but what's to stop them?
If they don't go with the new group who usually is going to offer to hire them, then they're all scrambling for jobs, unemployed. If they do break their previous agreement and sign with the new group, they could in theory be sued by the old group if, and this is a big IF: if the old group even
exists anymore to sue them for violating the clause.
See? Once the ER group (pure ER-only group) loses it's contract, it effectively ceases to exist and ceases to have any ability to sue for anything. Once you lose your contract, you leave the group, and the group ceases to generate any more cash flow. (They now have no employees). Are you going to stay with the group that has no ER contract for you to get hours at, and pay a bunch of lawyers to sue the docs who took the new job, as you scramble to go find employment? Probably not. The more practical thing is for everyone to bite their tongue and work for the new cannibalistic group that fired you, so you can make your house payment, while you decide if it's tolerable or time to look for a new job and maybe move.
An exception would be if it's a multi-specialty/multi-contract group where the other specialties/contracts continue to exist after the ER group splits off. Then in theory, your previous group could sue the guys who left after contract loss, to avenge that. Or more likely, they could threaten to do so, hoping the new CMG who kicked them out will pay some money to "buy out" the non-competes. In this scenario, the old group likely gets whatever money was negotiated, not the ER doctors who left to work for the predatory contract-taking group.