Records For Living Community

Hi there

I was wondering;  many folks use a wide array of private type of servies that qualify for listing under expense items but there are not many categories available  to choose from as one might  expect, some examples we would like to see added :

• Private Pay Services ( such as Nurses, HHA's)
• Private Pay House Call ( RN, Nurse Practitioner, MD )
• Dental Expenses
• Private Case Manager Services
• Homemaker /companion services
• Housekeeper
• Durable Medical Equipment expense ( bandages, etc)

These items are all expenses that can then be added up for IRS deductions when one is spending out of pocket money for health care as many people now do especially those with chronic illness who exhaust their VNA service benefits from either HMO or Medicare services. The problem with all of health care is that not everythng is 100% deductible anymore, there is always a catch and the options for co payment or direct out of pocket expense are adding up for folks, the other thought is many people are happy  and able to pay for services for a loved one that keeps them in the comfort of their own home and does not promote the warehousing of the loved one in a nursing home so those costs associated with staying at home are also needing to be tracked for IRS and end of the year Tax planning. This is especially true in hsocie situations and chronic care illness as in many cancer patients whom pay out of pocket for a wide variety of things that could be listed as an expense to track.

Thanks much, just a suggestion.

Maura

Hi, Maura.

You are correct that HealthFrame more than likely could use adding a number of new expense types, especially in support of folks who are tracking IRS deductions.  You are hopefully aware of the fact that HealthFrame allows users to enter expense types that aren't built-into the system.  The limitation of the current release is that it does not remember user-added expense types.  Esther initiated a thread in the forum on this very topic and you may be interested in reading some of the discussions: http://community.recordsforliving.com/forums/thread/634.aspx

A few other interesting features that may be helpful in the meantime.  HealthFrame supports a powerful combination of linking and report configuration that may help in the current release.

Let's talk about this a bit further, using your final example, Durable Medical Equiment (DME) expense (e.g. for bandages).  With HealthFrame, you can create an entry for your medical devices (Home > Health > Medical Devices) - please see picture below.  In the record entry for the specific device, you can link to an expense of type "DME" - user defined as explained in the link above.  Finally, you can go to the Expense Transaction Report (Home > Reports > Expenses > Expense Transaction Report) and filter to display expenses of type "DME".  The software will automatically list those for you and add up your expenses for the fiscal year (see bottom of picture below).

Thanks for taking the time to post your suggestions for improvements,
Support Team