Preventing aides from side stepping agency..

How would a nursing agency stop their employees from doing side jobs with a client at a discounted rate? For example, lets say you hire Sandy who is a CNA and pay her $10/hr. She is assigned to work with John, Jim and Jose who pays your company $15/hr each. Sandy, being the greedy person she is, decided to tell the three clients that she would eliminate the middleman and work at $13/hr. She gets paid more, they pay less, you get nothing.

It seems like almost any CNA can build a list of clients and then side step the agency and do it on their own. What kind of preventative measures are taken against this?

Thanks.

-Tahleel

Have both parties (client & CNA) sign contracts stating they will not work together independent of the agency for a set period of time following their termination of business with the agency without paying a financial penalty.

Travel nurse companies do this all the time. Most travel contracts state that a nurse cannot go to work for a hospital that they worked for with the travel company for at least 6 months after their travel assignment ended. If they do, the hospital has to pay a financial penalty to "buy out" the nurse's contract.

I have worked for home health agencies that have the contractual agreement on both the employee and the client as Amanda has stated. The liquidated damages is usually stated as a set amount, either $2500 or $5000, or done by a formula for a portion of the yearly salary. Payable by both. But I can tell you that if they want to sidestep the agency, they will. My supervisor did this for years. She told me that her answer to the agency, was "You can't tell me what I can and can't do on my time off". She was working both for the agency and the client at the same time. I also worked on another case where the client was wealthy and hired away his caregivers when he went on his own. When the cost of your private medical care is close to one million a year, I can see why a person whose wealth is declining would want to save money.