The advertised amount is based upon an 8 hour day. It is the pay per hour. The rate is usually "$100/hour with an 8 hour per day minimum." So say you work Monday for 5 hours and they let you go home. You still get paid for 8 hours. You do not want to work and just get paid for the 5 hours because if it was set up that way, you can bet the locums guy would get sent home first every single day. Be murder on your pocket and hard to predict income.
If on Tuesday you work 10 hours, you get the 8 hour minimum PLUS two more hours of pay, for a total of $1000 for that day. You know you will get 8 hours, with the potential for more if you work more. Their response in this case may be to keep you working the full 8 hours and never give you over time, but still, you know you will get at least 8 hours and you can budget better.
The per diem, hotel, mileage, airfare/rental car are extras and while they do not total up as much as the pay, they are still factors you need to consider. For example, food and lodging. If you agree to take the base pay and pay your own expenses, you can really get burned if you find out you are in an area where the hotel costs $130 a day and food is $50 per day. Or airfare and a rental car. Again, you can get burned if airfare is way up and rental cars are expensive in that area. BETTER to make them pay per diem, lodging, mileage/airfare/rental so you will not get any surprises.
As far as being an employee of an agency, I suppose you could do that though I never have tried. One down side of being an employee with an agency is THEY get to pick the jobs as you are nothing but an employee. Better to be an independent contractor as YOU get to pick the jobs.
Another note: If you use an agency, you set it up so you get paid by the agency rather than directly by the hospital. So say you did some work in California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Ohio. With the agency paying you, the check comes from the agency regardless of where you worked. You only get ONE 1099 form vs one from every single place you worked. Makes it much easier to do income taxes as you only have one 1099 form to deal with.
