Ohio bill would set app-work rules for health care shifts

For nurses, aides and other health care workers picking up shifts through apps, the difference between contractor and employee can decide overtime, employer duties and how much say a platform has over the job. In Ohio, a proposal would draw that line around how much control the platform keeps, not just around the name on the booking screen.

The measure does not treat every platform-booked shift as outside employment. It asks whether the worker stays free enough to accept work without being tied to specific hours or ordered through the details of how the job is done.

The two limits that matter

The bill says a health care worker platform cannot require the worker to be available for particular shifts during specific hours or on specific days. It also cannot prescribe or control the means and methods for services performed at a health care facility. Those are the guardrails that separate a flexible booking system from something that starts to look like an employer.

That distinction is the whole point of the carveout. If those conditions are met, the worker would not be treated as the employee of the platform or the facility for the specific laws the bill reaches.

A narrower rulebook, not a broad gig overhaul

The proposal is aimed at a narrow slice of labor law, not a wholesale rewrite of how gig work is treated. The practical stakes are overtime coverage and other employer obligations that can attach once a worker is classified as an employee.

Available vote records show the bill advanced without recorded no votes. The measure would amend sections 4121.01 and 4113.87 of the Ohio Revised Code, and it also folds in a volunteer exclusion so that a person acting as a volunteer is not treated as an employee.