Healthcare non-compete agreements prohibited in Utah

June 9, 2026

Effective May 6, 2026, non-compete agreements between employers and healthcare professionals are generally prohibited.  Under Utah Code Annotated § 34-51-201(1)(b), any such agreement is void.  Agreements entered into on or after May 10, 2016, and before May 6, 2026, remain in effect.

The prohibition applies to licensed healthcare professionals (the statute includes a specific list of thirty-three licensee categories) whose scope of practice allows seeing patients and making diagnostic or treatment recommendations.   Notably, the list does not include pharmacists despite the licensing flexibility of a pharmacist to evaluate and treat certain medical conditions.

A non-compete agreement is defined as “an agreement between a person and a healthcare worker within which the healthcare worker agrees that, after the day on which the healthcare worker no longer works for or with the person, the healthcare worker will not engage in a service that the healthcare worker may provide under the scope of the healthcare worker’s license . . . for a restricted period of time or within a specific geographic area.”

As with prior versions of the statute that did not place restrictions on healthcare workers, the prohibition does not limit non-solicitation agreements or confidentiality agreements.  There are exceptions for severance agreements “mutually and freely agreed upon in good faith at or after the time of termination” and for the sale of a business.

With this revision to the statute, Utah joins a growing number of jurisdictions prohibiting these restrictions on the right of a professional to change the location or form of their practice.

Robert R. Harrison