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

Yes — if the covenant is reasonable.

Pennsylvania has no general non-compete statute: the governing rule is the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's 2002 Hess decision, which enforces a restrictive covenant when it is incident to the employment relationship, reasonably necessary to protect the employer, and reasonably limited in duration and geographic extent.

When a covenant is broader than necessary, a court may enforce only the portions that are reasonably necessary.

Two more answers up front.

None of the three requirements asks what the employee earns, so there is no income gate for a hygienist or front-desk hire.

And the Pennsylvania law that reshaped non-competes for health care workers — Act 74 of 2024, effective January 1, 2025 — does not cover dentists, hygienists or assistants, so covenants for your dental roles still live or die on the reasonableness test.

This page is the employer's view.

If you are the associate handed a covenant to sign, that is the worker's side of the question — see our guide to dentist non-compete agreements.

Start with what does not govern.

The FTC's 2024 Non-Compete Clause Rule was set aside in court and never took effect, and in a final rule published February 12, 2026 the FTC removed it from the Code of Federal Regulations — so as of October 7, 2026 there is no federal rule banning employee non-competes at a dental practice.

The FTC says it can still challenge individual non-competes case by case under Section 5 of the FTC Act when they are unjustified, overbroad or anticompetitive.

How the other states handle dental covenants is our guide to non-competes for dental staff nationally.

In Pennsylvania, the rules are judge-made: there is no general non-compete statute, so the controlling authority is the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's 2002 Hess decision (808 A.2d 912; full citation in the sources below).

Under Hess, restrictive covenants are enforceable if they are incident to an employment relationship between the parties, the restrictions imposed are reasonably necessary for the protection of the employer, and the restrictions imposed are reasonably limited in duration and geographic extent.

Hess also settles what happens to an overbroad clause: when a covenant imposes restrictions broader than necessary to protect the employer, a court of equity may grant enforcement limited to the portions of the restrictions that are reasonably necessary.

Pennsylvania does have a healthcare non-compete law — it just does not name your staff.

The Fair Contracting for Health Care Practitioners Act (Act 74 of 2024, signed July 17, 2024) took effect January 1, 2025.

The Act defines a covered “health care practitioner” as a medical doctor, a doctor of osteopathy, a certified registered nurse anesthetist, a certified registered nurse practitioner or a physician assistant — and dentists, dental hygienists and dental assistants are not on the list.

For covered clinicians, the change is real: a noncompete covenant signed after January 1, 2025 is void, except that an employer may enforce one lasting no more than one year if the practitioner was not dismissed by the employer.

The Act defines a noncompete covenant as an agreement that impedes the practitioner's ability to keep treating patients or accept new patients after employment ends.

If your practice also employs one of the covered clinician types, those limits apply to that person's covenant — they just do not reach your dental roster.

So Pennsylvania hands you neither a special problem nor a special protection — there is no dentist-specific statute to draft around.

Texas makes a non-compete relating to the practice of dentistry unenforceable against a Texas-licensed dentist — for covenants entered into or renewed on or after September 1, 2025 — unless it caps the buyout at no greater than the dentist's total annual salary and wages at termination, expires within one year after termination, covers no more than a 5-mile radius from where the dentist primarily practiced, and states its terms clearly and conspicuously in writing.

No Pennsylvania gate like that exists for dental staff, and no income threshold either: Illinois bars non-competes against employees earning $75,000 a year or less, rising to $80,000 on January 1, 2027, while the Hess test asks nothing about pay.

One caveat: legislatures amend.

This guide's research did not track Pennsylvania bills, so if you hear of a proposal extending Act 74 to dental workers, have counsel confirm its status.

Hess turns into three questions you should be able to answer in writing before your template goes out:

• Incident to the employment relationship. The covenant has to be part of the deal that puts the person in your practice — tied to the employment relationship between the parties, not a standalone restraint detached from the job.
• Reasonably necessary to protect the employer. Name what the covenant protects: the patients this associate will treat, the office you just equipped, the referral relationships your practice built. If you cannot point to what the covenant protects, you cannot show it is reasonably necessary for the protection of the employer — the second Hess requirement.
• Reasonably limited in duration and geographic extent. How long, and how wide? Hess asks a court to judge reasonableness — it does not supply a safe number.

Be careful with any template that promises a magic term: the research for this guide found no Pennsylvania statute setting a maximum length or a bright-line radius, and it did not collect the later Pennsylvania decisions applying Hess to dental covenants either.

Have counsel check your specific term and radius against Pennsylvania case law before you rely on them.

Resist the temptation to draft wide because Hess lets a court trim: partial enforcement protects the judge's view of your practice, and it arrives only after a lawsuit is already running.

A non-solicit restricts who a departing employee may contact — your patients, your staff — rather than where they may work, and it is drafted as its own clause, separate from any non-compete.

Hess speaks to restrictive covenants and their reasonableness, but this guide's research covers the non-compete test, not how Pennsylvania courts treat non-solicitation clauses specifically — treat the enforceability of a given clause as a question for your counsel, and see patient and staff non-solicits for how these clauses are structured.

Confidentiality is the quieter protection.

Under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, business information — a patient list included — is a trade secret only if the owner took reasonable measures to keep it secret and it has independent economic value from not being generally known; access controls and signed confidentiality terms are how you build that record.

The DTSA lets the owner of a misappropriated trade secret related to a product or service in interstate commerce sue in federal court, but read its limits: an injunction may not prevent a person from entering into an employment relationship, and any conditions on the new job must rest on evidence of threatened misappropriation, not merely on what the person knows.

Pennsylvania's reasonableness review rewards the practice that drafts narrowly and layers its protections:

• Draft to the Hess test, not past it. Name the interest, keep the term the shortest span that protects it, and draw the area from where your patients actually travel.
• Use the right clause for the right worry. A non-compete answers “where can they work next”; a non-solicit answers “who can they contact”; confidentiality answers “what can they take.” Layer all three rather than overloading one.
• Keep covered clinicians in a separate box. If an Act 74 practitioner — an MD, DO, CRNA, CRNP or PA — is on your payroll, a covenant signed after January 1, 2025 is void unless it lasts no more than one year and they were not dismissed — your dental staff's covenant is not.
• Price training separately. If the real concern is recovering the cost of specialized training, that is a different tool with its own legal limits — see our guide to training repayment agreements.
• Confirm licensure at hire. A covenant only matters if the person can practice — our guide to dentist licensure in Pennsylvania covers what the state requires.
• Have Pennsylvania employment counsel review the final language before it goes into an offer packet — the test is case law, and counsel is how you keep current with it.