Say your first attending contract has a without-cause notice period, and you use it. You give notice, the practice acknowledges it, and the clock starts. It is easy to assume that is the whole of it.
It is the easy half. Your contract governs the job. Your license governs the patients, and nobody hands you that second rulebook.
The AMA and AOA agree. The AMA Code holds that a physician's fiduciary responsibility "entails an obligation to support continuity of care," and that a physician withdrawing from a case must notify the patient far enough in advance to let them secure another physician, and facilitate transfer of care when appropriate. Look at the subject of those clauses. The duty belongs to the physician. Handing it to the practice does not discharge it.
Some states turn that into a rule with dates attached. The Texas Medical Board rewrote its version in January 2025, worth reading wherever you are. If you carry a panel, the rule requires a letter or email to every patient you saw in the last two years, and a notice in the office and online at least 30 days before you go. Physicians who only treated patients in a hospital, ER, birthing center or surgery center are exempt, as are those who only did anesthesia, radiology or pathology, and locums under six months. The exemption is the tell: the duty tracks the continuing relationship, not the job.
The rule then turns to your employer. The practice must give you the list of those patients so you can send the notices. It is not required to send them itself. And no physician remaining there may prevent or interfere with your sending them.
Those mechanics are one state's. Elsewhere the mailing may fall on your employer. Find out which applies. "The group is handling it" is an assumption, not a confirmation.
Check your contract before you write to anyone. The non-compete in Issue No. 10 governs where you may practice. A non-solicitation governs whom you may approach, and it is a separate restriction. If either appears to bar the contact your state may expect, that is a question for a lawyer before you send anything, not after.
The records are usually not yours to take. Federal law gives the patient the right to a copy, and the practice holding the chart 30 days to act on the request. What you owe the people you are leaving is notice and a route, not the file.
Two questions: what does my state require when I leave, and what does my contract say about contacting my own patients? Both are answerable the week you sign. Ask them then, not the week you go.