How Our Marketplace Model Improves Life for Nurses and Patients

Conversations are heating up around the pros and cons of deploying gig work in nursing, and for good reason: nursing is a high-stakes industry where a poorly coordinated marketplace model can have devastating consequences for everyone involved.

With gig work’s popularity only expected to rise from here, now is the time to closely scrutinize where the system succeeds, how it falls short, and what nurses need to thrive in the modern on-demand workforce.

As a company built by nurses for nurses, here’s how we’re approaching the marketplace model to make life better for nurses, patients, hospital leaders, pharmacists, payers, and more.

---

Gig Work for Nurses: What’s Missing From the Marketplace Model

The Rise and Fall of Gig Work in Nursing

The first wave of nursing gig work hit about a decade ago, and since then, hospitals across the country have come to depend on the on-demand labor to backfill last-minute sick calls from permanent staff.

This dependency was solidified, of course, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fueled by hospital staffing shortages and backed by ZIRP (the zero-interest rate period between 2020 and 2022), health companies aggressively popularized the thesis that a gig-based marketplace could solve nurse hiring challenges. Fueled by federal subsidies to keep essential services operational, health systems now became reliant on gig-work staffing for more than just backfilling staffing holes, but to compensate for empty FTEs.

Since the pandemic, nurses have continued turning to gig platforms to make extra cash, gain control over their schedules, and stay involved in the field after leaving the full-time workforce. In 2023, one gig work platform reported a 54% increase in filled gig shifts since the previous year.

As a result, we now live in a world where some hospitals staff up to 80% of nurse vacancies with gig workers.

But what’s actually going on behind the scenes of these hospital gig shifts?

Why Hospital-Based Gig Work Fails

The verdict is in: staffing hospitals and facilities with transient labor fails. Take it from the Roosevelt Institute, which released a report in December 2024 titled ‘Uber for Nursing: How an AI-Powered Gig Model Is Threatening Health Care.’

Per the report:

“These apps encourage nurses to work for less pay, fail to provide certainty about scheduling and the amount or nature of work, take little to no accountability for worker safety, and can threaten patient well-being by placing nurses in unfamiliar clinical environments with no onboarding or facility training.”

Countless media investigations backing the above findings:

• Nurses say gig work apps can put them in tough situations and stressful hospitals

• Nursing has become a new frontier for gig work, and it’s creating the same issues that Uber drivers face

• Staffing firm lawsuit brings to life LTC, agency gripes over nursing gig work

From Float’s POV, these gig models don’t just hurt nurses (although that alone should sound the alarm)—due to their lack of scalability, they also hurt hospitals and their partners. There is simply too much context-dependent information required to effectively train nurses in new hospitals or facilities because each new nurse has to go through extensive onboarding on department-specific policies, disaster plans, supply locations, personnel orientation, and innumerable other pieces of institutional knowledge. All of that takes time, money, and logistical know-how.

Moreover, health systems are now paying penance for the deal they made during the pandemic; operations are now overly reliant on gig healthcare workers for both travel and shift-based assignments. This inflates the cost of care, and already-thin hospital margins are pushed negative as they bear the burden of overpriced staffing. Hospitals need a way to decompress the overcrowding that is driving up their staffing needs beyond capacity, they need a way to divert the patients that can get routine care to the home, so they can focus on the truly sick.  

But the fact remains that many nurses want a lucrative side hustle with flexible hours. Where can they go to enjoy the promise of gig work without risking their safety, sanity, and financial security?

Where Gig Work Does Make Sense: Specialty Pharma and Home Infusions

Through Float, we’ve found the answer: specialty pharma (SP). Unlike hospitals and facilities, SP and gig work fit together so well, the model has been used in the field successfully since the early 1990s, often with schedules that equate to full-time hours.

The reasoning is relatively straightforward. Home infusions (Float’s focus) are consistent and straightforward enough for nurses to feel good about the quality and impact of their work, even in short shifts in new settings—no extensive institutional knowledge needed.

Even better, home infusions can transform a patient’s quality of life and reduce healthcare costs, benefitting families and payers alike. For hospitals, home infusions also perform a critical function: they open up more beds, helping to reduce the burden on resource-stretched facilities.

Most importantly, nurses can reap the benefits of SP’s gig model without sacrificing the money and freedom they deserve. Through Float, nurses have complete flexibility and control over their schedules and are paid 1.5-2x more than in a hospital, where a shift is 12.5 hours long. Float’s nurse retention rate sits at 56%.

The Float Difference: A Marketplace Model Built for Nurses, Patients, Pharmacies, and More

So why don’t more nurses pursue specialty pharma for gig work? One of the main barriers is the field’s outdated technology.

For example, many specialty pharmacies use physical Rolodexes and sticky notes plastered to computer screens to manage incoming referrals, available nursing sources, and rescheduling ongoing visits for existing patients. This leaves nurses juggling phone calls, texts, and emails to fill prescriptions and coordinate care.

That’s why we’re focused on perfecting the technology behind the Float platform. Our goal is not only to become the rails for the already existing solution, but to make the existing solution more efficient—ultimately standardizing and elevating the quality of care in this specific sector of health.

So far, we’ve brought three key benefits to nursing gig work that aren’t guaranteed in a hospital setting:

• Elevated compliance: Specialty pharma’s contained ecosystem has allowed us to build a platform that creates and maintains compliance that is 100x better than hospital error rates (AKA, less payroll drama).

• Flexible work: Instead of long, hectic hospital shifts, Float nurses can select visit opportunities as short as 45 minutes that pay well and put them in control of their days.

• Patient-focused care: By allowing nurses to care for one patient getting one medicine, Float allows nurses to give high-quality patient-centric care that keeps the spark of passion they have for nursing burning brightly.

This model attracts the most experienced nurses, strengthening partner trust across the board, from patients to pharmacies to payers to prescribers.

The Future of Healthcare Marketplaces

For health leaders and investors, the question isn’t whether gig work belongs in nursing—it’s about where and how it can be deployed responsibly. The future of gig-based healthcare lies in structured, scalable models that prioritize quality, compensation, and continuity of care.

At Float, we’re proving that a thoughtfully designed marketplace can transform nursing for the better. If you’re shaping the future of healthcare staffing, it’s time to take a critical look at where gig models work, and where they don’t. Let’s build a system that truly serves nurses, patients, and the entire healthcare industry.