Ensure your transition by thinking ahead:
-Save, print, etc all of your surgeries, x-rays etc if you are going for board certification. Easier to take them with you than to call the last people and ask for them.
There's also something to be said for looking at your surgery encounters and trying to tie a bow around them when it appropriate... I did a lapidus awhile back that was going great. Returning to WB in normal shoe. Great correction but still using a boot at work because she had a job where she was on her feet and was early in the recovery. My office fired the patient's niece and she just quit following up. Someone stepped on her foot the other day and she presented just to make sure the surgery site was ok. I saw that as an opportunity complete her story - since I last saw her she's doing great, she's entirely returned to shoes, she has no complaints about swelling, her bunion hasn't recurred, and she'll continue to healing. I'm trying to own the narrative and get in front of those stories I hear about failing case review because the patient is still swollen...
-Protect your reputation and act in the best interest of your patients. This is patient and practice specific. If you are leaving behind some Austin's that are 3 weeks out and your partner just does forefoot, that's different than leaving behind a healing triple or an ex-fix case or a non-union that needs revision. I have no doubt that no shortage of practices have fired or watched associates walk away with patients still in the post-op. There's still a right and a wrong way to do things - try within reason to be more on the right side of things. Your "ex" will likely tear you to pieces after you are gone, but it will be more difficult for them if everyone you leave is looking great. My residency had 2 attendings who were in a constant state of warfare. If one of them had to see the other's post-op they always had something negative to say. Another podiatrist can probably always find a way to tear you down and the patient won't know any better. If you stay in the same town ensure you don't do anything to jeopardize your privileging. I can't give you any concrete examples of this ie. the patient runs back to the hospital and says "he abandoned me", but in the last 2 weeks 3 patients have told me their spouse a board member at a hospital I just got credentialed yet. I'm operating on 2 of them.
-Review your contract when it comes to the terms of leaving. Its always interesting to me the lawyer-contract discussions we have here. I think jokingly we focus on the "what will the job be like part" but the how do I quit really deserves equal billing. I'm pretty sure dtrack is really close to the mark. Even if notice is spelled out - unless there's a penalty as mentioned above there may be nothing to come of it. Look to see if the contract stipulates that you should be paid a percentage of collections which have been billed but not yet collected. My suspicion is that will be on the line if you leave early. If your new job is that much better the amount may be trivial.
-You may or may not owe tail. You should look for prior threads on this - dtrack and airbud both have interesting commentary on it. Keep this expense in mind when you remember your former practice. If they were such nice people, why are you throwing $$$s to the wind.
-Be prepared for many different possibilities when you give notice.
-They fire you on the spot. Consider having your desk already cleaned up gradually in the weeks before / take your text books home if you brought any with you.
-They want to work with you ie. ensure a smooth transition. Have a list of your post-ops already created with surgery, point in recovery etc. If your "notice" is 90 days, but you don't have any real post-ops left/ minimal global concerns the goal may just be to ensure an easy transition out in a shorter time period. Ask yourself - do I have any problem, crazy, weird, still working it up patients or problems. Have a plan to get any cases past the tricky point ie. leave when your lapidus is walking, not after the first post-op.
-They want to SCREW you. If you don't have a base and are just in some sort of collections based system - if you stay for 90 days they can schedule all new patients, all surgery patients, all matrixectomies on someone else's schedule. You'll be showing up for free seeing 5 people a day and trimming some nails and they can schedule you a patient at 8am and 5pm. I'm trying to be cynical here. Theoretically if you have a base this strategy likely fails since they won't want to pay you to do nothing.
The heart of all these things above really is - Don't stay 90 days. Have a plan to get out. Probably avoid booking big cases.
-Theoretically they should be concerned that you'll tell all the patients - hey, I'm leaving to go elsewhere, wait for me. I'm skeptical how that works since you won't be working for several months depending on how your insurance credentialing goes..
I'm skeptical there's any benefit telling them what you hate about the practice. You're leaving. People leave all the time.
-COBRA. If your practice is paying for health insurance you will have to pay the premiums yourself. Your new practice may have issues getting your insurance started early - often times you have to work at least 2-4 weeks before they can put you on it. Course, I'm assuming you are getting insurance but this is podiatry after all...
-If you have a 401k - you'll probably want to roll it over. The general direction of 401ks in general is towards overall improvement, but you might have better funds if you roll it into a Rollover IRA somewhere like Fidelity. This also could interfere with doing a backdoor IRA in the future if you are wealthy so be careful.
