Driving

Specialties Home Health

Published

Hi,

Please how much driving from your house to a patient's house do you think is reasonable and fair?

Thanks

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Are you speaking about distance? How far do you want to travel one way and how many trips will you go there each week? If you are doing five 8 hour shifts with the same patient each week and that patient lives 74 miles from your house, guess what condition your car is going to be in after three years? Others will say they drive X amount doing visits. Well, maybe they are doing well enough, maybe they have a husband with a good job, that they can buy a new car every so often. When home health killed my old car, my credit was so bad, (I haven't gotten rich working in hh)I couldn't buy a new car. No car, no job. The mileage you get paid if you do visits and get paid mileage doesn't come near to compensating for wear and tear on your car. I've been going out 26, 28 miles. It is too far, but nobody has any work for me, much less work that is a reasonable distance from where I live. I think reasonable, so your car doesn't get a beating, is no further than 12 or 13 miles for one patient. That is my opinion. I'm not made of money to be buying cars for work. And busses do not run at night for night shift.

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I drive between 30-45 miles to see patients and I am complaining. Some of my patients are close to my home but most are far. I get paid for mileage but sometimes I drive 40 miles to get home and don't get paid for it. I try to see the patients close by last so that I won't have to drive very long distance to get home but it doesn't always work out that way.

So I decided to find out how far others drive.

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If this is putting a strain on you, consider changing to shift work like I am doing and limit how far you will drive to your client. I think you are at the limit that is reasonable for someone who is making allowances for driving between clients. I once drove 34 miles one way for a client that I worked with twice then four times a week. After that case was when my car gave out. I had no source of income to get a car. This is one of the reasons I avoid intermittent visits. Nobody gets paid to replace their car. Those who drive upwards of 120 miles a day,,,,I don't know how or why they do it.

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Shift work sounds good but having to stay with the patient for 8hr may not work well for me. I like to be able to do things in between. I guess I can't eat my cake and have it

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Sometimes you can cut your shifts short. Knew a client that got a day shift nurse who only worked 7 hours so she could be home when her child got home from school. The client was happy to have a nurse for 7 hours since with her previous agency she was doing without. There are also sometimes four hour or six hour shifts. You can also schedule your days off in the middle of the week. Nobody says you have to work 7 to 3, five days a week. The only part about the flexibility of home health that I don't like is when I'm flexibly unemployed. While I like not working, I don't like not having money for the rent and food and such.

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I drive approx 300-400 miles every 2 weeks. My agency pays for mileage at 80% of the IRS rate (which right now is I think 44 cents per mile). My mileage reimbursement is about $400 per month from my agency, and then I write off on my taxes the other 20% that my agency doesn't reimburse, along with the mileage to my first patient and the mileage home from my last patient at 100% (per my CPA). At any rate, $4800 per year in mileage reimbursement more than covers my expenses in vehicle maintenance, gas, etc. I do drive a new vehicle, so it doesn't cover maintenance and my car payment, but I wouldn't expect mileage allowance to cover both. Many others in my office have complained that their expenses aren't covered either--I don't get it.

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Specializes in COS-C, Risk Management.

Nicole109, that's great that you can itemize what you're not getting from your employer, but not everyone can itemize their tax returns. I lost a lot last year in unpaid mileage because I am not able to itemize, the standard deduction is more than what I could claim. If you drive a car that gets great mileage, has low maintenance costs, and is still under warranty, your mileage can more than pay your expenses. But my car is over ten years old, no warranty, and is a fortune to maintain, but I can't afford a car payment right now so I'm stuck with it for the time being. I think mileage allowance this year is $0.505 per mile, and last year I got $0.40 per mile from my employer. I have a new job this year and now I get a "trip fee" which sometimes works out better than mileage, sometimes not, but don't know how it would impact itemization.

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what's fair is relative to what kinda car you drive (how much it cost and the mpg) and how much you get reimbursed.

with that said:

get a little honda if you're in hh, 40 mpg and the car i use for hh is 16 years old! gas is only going to go up, up and away.

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I once worked with a guy who used his motorcycle to get around in home health. He saved money in gas that way but he said it made for a little discomfort when there was bad weather.

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I once worked with a guy who used his motorcycle to get around in home health. He saved money in gas that way but he said it made for a little discomfort when there was bad weather.

i like saving money, but motorcycles just aren't safe enough for me or provide enough protection from the weather.

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i like saving money, but motorcycles just aren't safe enough for me or provide enough protection from the weather.

Those were my same thoughts which I expressed to my coworker. I wouldn't ride a motorcycle around the block. I keep remembering my classmate in high school whose brother was killed on a motorcycle while he was stopped at a stoplight because the driver did not see him.

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