Veterinary Non-Competes in Kentucky

Kentucky has no general statute governing employee non-competes, so a veterinarian's covenant is measured entirely against the common-law standard Kegel v.

Tillotson restates: a restraint is reasonable only if it affords fair protection to the employer's interests and is not so large as to interfere with the public interest or impose undue hardship.

Read against an offer, that is a case-by-case balancing test rather than a fixed formula — there is no statutory number of months or miles to check a clause against.

The sources read for this page separately record that continued at-will employment alone is not adequate consideration for an existing employee's non-compete, in Charles T.

Creech, Inc. v.

Brown.

Both questions — is the restraint reasonable, and was it properly supported by consideration — go to whether a Kentucky veterinarian's covenant holds up at all.

KRS § 216.724 restricts what a "health care services agency" may put in a contract with the temporary direct care staff it places at an assisted living community, long-term care facility, or hospital — including barring contract non-compete clauses and contract buy-out provisions against that placed staff.

It is a narrow statute aimed at one business model, staffing agencies, not at veterinary employers or veterinary employees generally.

Nothing in its text mentions veterinary medicine, veterinary practices, or veterinarians, and it applies only to staff placed by an agency, not to a veterinarian hired directly by a practice.

A veterinarian reading about Kentucky "restricting healthcare non-competes" should not assume this statute reaches their own employment contract with a veterinary clinic.

KRS § 216.724 was last amended in 2023, per the sources read, though the amendment's specific text changes are not detailed in the research behind this page.

In the 2025 legislative session, two bills, HB 690 and SB 234, were introduced as part of an effort to reform Kentucky non-compete law more broadly — the sources read do not describe what either bill would have done.

Both failed to pass.

Kentucky's operative rule for a veterinarian's covenant therefore remains the Kegel common-law reasonableness test, unchanged by either 2025 effort.

The research behind this page establishes the reasonableness test and the consideration rule from case law, and confirms that KRS § 216.724 excludes veterinary practices, but it does not establish how a Kentucky court modifies an overbroad covenant — whether by rewriting it, striking parts of it, or refusing to enforce any of it — nor any specific duration or geographic cap, nor how a covenant tied to selling a practice or an ownership interest is treated, nor how client or staff non-solicitation clauses are handled.

Those gaps matter most at a buy-in or buy-out, where a covenant is often drafted alongside the purchase terms.

They are left blank here rather than filled from another state's rule or from a source the Kentucky row itself does not cite — take them to a Kentucky attorney with the whole agreement in hand.