Healthcare staffing is the latest focus of gig economy regulation as state legislatures weigh industry-backed proposals classifying temporary nurses as independent contractors, an advocacy strategyreminiscent of Uber’s early days.

Lawmakers in more than a dozen states have considered bills to regulate “healthcare worker platforms,”sometimes exempting them from staffing agency rules and sometimes imposing restrictions such asnoncompete bans. The companies provide apps that hospitals and nursing homes use to advertiseavailable shifts to nurses looking for a few hours or a day of work.

The proposals, such as an Ohio bill (SB 423) the state Senate passed unanimously in June, heightenhealthcare’s place in the policy and legal fight over gig worker classification, which has been dominated bydisputes over delivery and ride-hail driver jobs. As with drivers, industry supporters say the independentcontractor model gives nurses flexibility to pick up shift work while critics including labor unions say itthreatens to erode the profession’s pay, benefits, and employment law protections. [...]

Conceptual Concerns

The nature of healthcare, where each facility’s management dictates patient-care protocols, isn’t generallya good fit for the independent contractor model, said Adam Keating, a partner at Duane Morris LLP in Atlanta.

“There’s an inherent tension with having this app-based staffing model for healthcare workers as opposedto, say, Uber drivers,” he said.

But industry executives say shift-based staffing is supplementing, not replacing, full-time nurseemployment. [...]

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