How do you get paid for mileage?

TazziRN, RN · Sep 7, 2007

It's the same here, but if you live more than 10 miles from the office or the first pt's house, you get paid for every mile after the 10th mile. It's 36 miles to the office for me, so I get 26 of that paid. If I come home from a pt's house I get paid all but 10 miles of that ride too.

dgd123 · Sep 13, 2007

Mileage reimbursement can differ greatly by agency. The IRS sets the rate (currently 48.5 cents/mile) and an agency may choose to set their rate at this (ours does) or may pay lower.

As far as when to start your mileage, our agency starts it at first patient's home or the office, whichever is first. This is also when our time on the clock starts. Now, just because it says office, does not mean you actually have to go to the office. Agencies get this verbage from the IRS guidelines on travel which say that your non paid "commuting miles" are those from your home to your primary office. For instance, I live 30 miles from the office so daily I would "lose" 60 miles because these are my commuting miles.

Does anyone know why an agency can start paying mileage at 10 miles? I thought this was against IRS regulations. If not, I would sure like something in writing about this because I think this is a fair way given that agencies need to hire people in the outlying areas to cover the patients who live in these areas.

More food for thought---More and more agencies are on laptops now and the nurse starts and ends the day from home. I get up and import my charts, call my voice mail, my patients and head out the door. We even store all of our supplies in our personal vehicles. Most agencies encourage us to work from home, especially since there isn't enough room and we don't have desks or computer hookups available for everyone in the office. In light of this, I would like to know if anyone knows if IRS would consider our home our office, at least for mileage purposes. Of course, we get paid for this time but we have to clock out when we head out the door and then clock back in when we reach our first patient's home. It is definitely a dissatisfier with staff who live far from the agency "office".

Please let me know if anyone has written material to help us on this.

caliotter3 · Sep 30, 2007

My agencies have not paid me for mileage, basically because I do shift work and only travel to and from the patient's house. In one instance, however, I was paid mileage as an incentive, because the agency could not get anyone to take that case as it was too far away. I don't even remember whether they matched the IRS rate at the time, but it helped a little.