Are Non-Competes Enforceable for Dentists and Dental Staff in Kentucky?

Kentucky measures the covenants your associate dentists, hygienists, assistants and front-office staff sign by its court decisions — our research found no Kentucky non-compete statute to draft to.

Four results matter in practice:

• Reasonable covenants hold. The Kentucky Court of Appeals has put the working rule plainly: courts uphold non-competition restrictions if they are reasonable and not in restraint of trade (Hodges, 1985).
• Signing timing decides cases. In Creech (2014), the Kentucky Supreme Court refused to enforce a covenant signed by an existing at-will employee who got nothing new for it.
• No dentist-specific statute found. Our research found no Kentucky statute written for dentists, dental hygienists, dental assistants or other healthcare workers as of our October 2026 check — and the bills that would have restricted these covenants died in committee.
• No federal fallback. The Federal Trade Commission's non-compete rule never took effect — a federal court set it aside — and the Commission removed it from the Code of Federal Regulations in February 2026.

Our research found no Kentucky non-compete statute, so the rules live in opinions — and the cases are what your covenant gets measured against.

The Kentucky Supreme Court's 2014 decision in Creech is the one that decides signing timing.

An existing at-will employee signed a non-compete, and the court held it unenforceable because he received no consideration for it: after signing, his employment relationship did not change — still at-will, no promotion, no increase in wages, no specialized training.

The same opinion shows what does count.

Creech distinguished cases where employees signed and then received specialized training, promotions and increased wages — consideration enough there (Central Adjustment Bureau, a 1981 Kentucky Court of Appeals case).

And in Higdon Food Service, a 1982 Kentucky decision, a new written contract spelling out the employee's position and compensation altered the relationship enough to be treated as the same as a new employment, and it supported the covenant.

The takeaway for a practice is mechanical.

The clean moment for a non-compete is the original hire.

Adding one mid-employment is not automatically fatal, but Creech shows it needs something genuinely new in the relationship — a raise, a promotion, funded specialized training, or a new written agreement that spells out position and pay.

Start with the finding and its limit: our research for this page found no Kentucky statute written specifically for non-competes for dentists, dental hygienists, dental assistants or other healthcare workers as of our October 2026 check — treat that as a research finding, not settled law.

The same check confirmed the two attempts: Senate Bill 324 in 2024, which would have barred health service providers from requiring employee non-competes, was referred to the Senate Health Services Committee on February 29, 2024 and not enacted; Senate Bill 234 in 2025, which would have made non-compete clauses unenforceable, was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 20, 2025 and its record shows no later action.

What is left is the general case-law framework, where the question is the covenant's reasonableness.

Other states take different approaches, and some have statutes written for dentists.

Texas, for example, makes a non-compete relating to the practice of dentistry unenforceable against a Texas-licensed dentist unless the buyout is no greater than the dentist's total annual salary and wages at termination, it expires within one year after termination, it covers no more than a 5-mile radius from where the dentist primarily practiced, and it states its terms clearly and conspicuously in writing.

South Dakota's healthcare non-compete statute lists dentists among the practitioners it covers.

How the full map looks outside Kentucky is covered in our guide to non-competes for dental staff nationally.

The standard.

Kentucky courts uphold non-competition restrictions if they are reasonable and not in restraint of trade (Hodges, Kentucky Court of Appeals, 1985).

Nothing we reviewed in Kentucky law supplies a statutory maximum number of years or a mile radius for a dental practice's covenant, so reasonableness is argued case by case rather than checked against a formula.

Geography.

Hodges itself was a sale-of-business case: the covenant had no geographic limit, and the court held the trial court could enforce it by establishing a reasonable geographical limitation based on the intention of the parties at the time the contract was executed.

Cite it for the standard, not as a settled rule for employee covenants — the context was the sale of a business.

Rewriting.

Do not count on a court to trim an overbroad covenant for you.

Whether Kentucky courts will reform an overbroad employment covenant — as opposed to a sale-of-business one — was not confirmed by the sources for this page, and Creech did not decide it.

Draft as if nobody will fix it: keep the restricted area inside the practice's realistic patient draw, and the term no longer than the protection is worth.

A non-solicit restricts whom a departing team member may target — your patients, your staff — rather than where they may work, which is why it is the natural companion to a narrow non-compete instead of a reason to widen it.

One limit on this page's research: the Kentucky decisions we reviewed deal with non-competition covenants, and our sources did not settle how Kentucky courts treat patient non-solicits specifically.

Have counsel draft those clauses with the same narrowness you give the covenant.

Confidentiality terms do the complementary work, and federal law backs them.

Under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, the owner of a misappropriated trade secret related to a product or service in interstate commerce can sue in federal court — and business information, a patient list included, counts as a trade secret only if you took reasonable measures to keep it secret and it has independent economic value from not being generally known.

A DTSA injunction may not prevent a person from entering into an employment relationship, and conditions on that employment must rest on evidence of threatened misappropriation, not merely on what the person knows.

For how these clauses are structured, see our guide to patient and staff non-solicits.

• Sign the covenant at hire. Creech makes mid-employment signing the risky version: no change in the relationship, no consideration, no covenant.
• If you add one later, pay for it. Specialized training, promotions and increased wages were the consideration in the cases Creech distinguished, and in Higdon a new written agreement spelling out position and compensation was treated as new employment.
• Draft narrow and self-sufficient. Keep the area inside the practice's realistic patient draw and the term short, and do not plan around a court rewriting the covenant.
• Pair it with patient and staff non-solicits and confidentiality terms rather than stretching the non-compete itself — and keep real limits on access to the patient list so trade-secret law has something left to protect.
• Protect training spend separately. Where you fund a course or credential for a hygienist or assistant, our guide to training repayment agreements covers how they work.

Before signature, confirm the clinician's credential — our guide to dentist licensure in Kentucky covers what an associate needs — and put the covenant in front of a Kentucky employment attorney before you rely on it.

If you are the clinician side of the negotiation, our guide to dentist non-compete agreements covers the worker's side.