With pressures from managed care mounting and competition within the medical profession becoming increasingly keen, physicians today are increasingly opting to sell their practices to hospitals or other large health care providers in return for the financial security and other benefits that such transactions provide. Under the customary arrangement, most physicians continue working for the acquiring entity for an extended period of time and otherwise agree not to compete with the institution that has just paid usually hundreds of thousands of dollars for their practice. Generally speaking, such arrangements are beneficial for both the individual physician and the acquiring institution and fulfill the expectations that both parties had entering into the transaction.
 

   However, situations occasionally arise in which individual physicians who have sold their respective practices do not receive the benefit of the bargain for which they have contracted or are otherwise dissatisfied with the continuing employment arrangements with the acquiring institution. Under these circumstances, physicians frequently consider reentering private practice, but are faced with the legal hurdle of circumventing the non-compete agreements that invariably they executed as part of the sale of their practice