DIBS Classification Explained: What Arizona's Direct Independent Business Support Law Means for Healthcare Workers

If you've claimed a per-diem healthcare shift in Arizona, you've almost certainly signed a DIBS acknowledgment without necessarily knowing what it means. DIBS - Direct Independent Business Support - is a specific Arizona statute, A.R.S. Section 23-1601, that creates a legal safe harbor for marketplace-based independent contracting. It's the reason platforms can let you claim individual shifts as a 1099 contractor rather than requiring you to be hired as an employee for every engagement.

Why a law like this exists

Traditional employment law was written around a fairly simple picture: one employer, one worker, an ongoing relationship, a set schedule. On-demand marketplaces - in healthcare staffing and elsewhere - don't fit that picture cleanly. A worker who claims a single 8-hour shift at a facility they've never worked at before, sets their own availability, and owes no one a fixed schedule looks different from a traditional employee, but the law needed to say so explicitly to give both sides certainty.

DIBS does that for Arizona. It defines a category of "marketplace contractor" relationship - platform, worker, and the business the work is performed for - and lays out specific conditions under which that relationship is legally an independent-contractor engagement, not employment.

What actually makes the classification hold

The specifics that matter in practice: the worker chooses which shifts to accept with no minimum-hours requirement, the marketplace doesn't set a fixed schedule, the worker can work through other platforms or facilities at the same time, and payment is tied to completed engagements rather than a salary. Every one of these has to genuinely be true - the classification isn't a label you can just apply, it's a description of how the work actually functions.

That's why a real marketplace built around DIBS enforces things like credential-gated claiming (you choose your shifts, nothing is assigned to you), transparent pay shown before you claim (no negotiated employment-style compensation), and no minimum-hours requirement anywhere in the product.

What it means for you as a worker

Practically: you're a 1099 independent contractor, not an employee of the facility or the marketplace. You choose your own hours and which shifts to take. You're responsible for your own tax withholding (a 1099 doesn't have taxes withheld the way a W-2 paycheck does). And you have the freedom to work with multiple facilities and multiple platforms without any exclusivity requirement.

This isn't the right fit for everyone - if you want a guaranteed schedule and employer-provided benefits, a traditional staff position is the better fit. But for professionals who want to control exactly when and where they work, DIBS is the legal foundation that makes that flexibility possible in Arizona without murky classification risk for either side.