Sponsors (2)
The bill increases flexibility and reduces legal and administrative costs for health systems using temporary clinicians by allowing contractor treatment under federal labor laws, but shifts risk to those clinicians by reducing employee protections and benefits and creates potential administrative confusion across other federal programs.
Healthcare facilities, contracting agencies, and locum tenens clinicians: the bill allows qualifying locum clinicians to be treated as independent contractors under key federal labor laws, preserving flexibility for temporary staffing and reducing employer liabilities and administrative/legal costs for facilities.
Locum clinicians and healthcare employers: the bill clarifies federal treatment of temporary clinicians across multiple programs, reducing regulatory uncertainty about employment status for services provided after enactment.
Locum clinicians: qualifying as independent contractors can mean losing employee protections such as overtime pay, anti-discrimination protections, and collective‑bargaining rights.
Locum clinicians: independent‑contractor classification can reduce access to employer‑provided benefits (for example, paid leave and retirement plan coverage) unless those benefits are contractually provided.
Clinicians, employers, and taxpayers: treating clinicians as contractors for federal labor laws but not for tax, Social Security, unemployment, or Medicare/Medicaid could create administrative complexity and confusion about rights and obligations.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Treats qualifying short-term locum physicians and advanced care practitioners as independent contractors for specified federal employment laws and HHS program determinations unless a written contract states otherwise.
Introduced February 25, 2026 by Buddy Carter · Last progress February 25, 2026
Establishes a federal rule that certain temporary "locum tenens" physicians and advanced care practitioners are treated as independent contractors—not employees—under a set of federal workplace laws and for HHS program employee-status determinations, unless a written contract between the practitioner and the health care facility expressly designates an employer-employee relationship. The rule applies only to qualifying temporary providers who work at a single site for up to one year, preserves State licensure and scope-of-practice laws, and explicitly does not change tax treatment, Social Security wage/benefit calculations, unemployment eligibility, or Medicare/Medicaid payment rules.