Nashville Medical News – Op Ed | May 9, 2023
Tony Braswell
Nurses are heroes, and their lifesaving work is more than worthy of the recognition it gets this time of year during National Nurses Week. However, if we really want to celebrate our nurses, we ought to ensure they receive the benefits and protections they deserve by properly classifying them as W-2 employees.
The rise of digital healthcare staffing platforms that connect nurses to open shifts has left some to be wrongly classified as 1099 independent contractors. Some platform companies claim they are only “matching” nurses to open shifts; they don’t “employ” them. This means they don’t receive the benefits they deserve, from overtime pay to workers comp coverage to employer-deducted taxes and healthcare options. To do right by nurses and properly comply with the law, these platforms ought to classify all nurses as W-2 employees.
