What Nurse Practitioner Expenses Should an Employer Pay For?
What business expenses should a nurse practitioner be reimbursed for? These can kind of vary depending on where you are, what your specialty is, and what kind of care you’re providing. But they all should be outlined in your employment agreement. I’m going to start with the most common ones and kind of work my way down from there. Starting with number one, your continuing education which would be considered part of your benefits package. You must continue your education to renew your license and practice. That’s the number one thing that employers normally reimburse for. It can look a couple of different ways, but I would say 90% of the time of the agreements that I see, you are given some type of continuing education allowance where there’s a max that they’ll reimburse and that’s normally anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 annually. This would include going to any types of conferences or meetings.
And if travel is involved, normally, that continuing education allowance does account for travel expenses. So, I would say that’s the first one. You also want to look, I don’t know if it technically is called reimbursement, but if they’re reimbursing you for your continuing education, your employer should also be offering you PTO time specifically for your continuing education. Otherwise, you’re using your own PTO from your vacation days. And that’s not something that you want to be giving. You need this continuing education to practice. Therefore, you should be receiving anywhere from two to five days of PTO time to take those continuing education. The next thing I would probably say is your DEA license. Sometimes you have to have them in multiple states. If you’re on the east coast, I see that come up a lot.
Or even in one state, you have to register your DEA license and it’s really expensive. It’s normally over $800. So, that’s a big expense that you do not need to be paying for. Your employer should be reimbursing you for that. And then also, your initial DEA license and any renewals. You want to make sure that you have that language in your employment contract. Going down the list, probably the next most common reimbursement is your license. Obviously, you have to have a license in order to practice and provide services for your employer. Therefore, they should be providing that. Also, professional dues for professional organizations, common nationally known organizations, or a local chapter. Normally, this also can be capped at a certain amount. But your employer should be reimbursing you for that.
Again, it’s probably going to help you with continuing your education, networking, best practices, all that stuff. It’s helpful to everyone. And so, they should be reimbursing you for those expenses. Depending on if you are moving to a new location to become an employee, you may get relocation expenses reimbursed, and this is kind of structured a couple of different ways. Sometimes they will directly reimburse you. You’ll provide them with receipts of your moving expenses. Sometimes your employer will pay the companies directly, so you’ll have to get approval, and then they will communicate with your moving company and pay them directly. And then other times it’s structured like a bonus. They’ll just give you around $10,000 upfront. Although if it’s structured as a bonus and you receive those funds, it’s taxed as income.
So, you just want to be aware of that, that you’re not going to receive that full amount because taxes will be taken out of it. And then also for sure, with the relocation expenses. But sometimes you have to be careful in an employment contract. There are provisions in there that if your employer is providing these reimbursements for these expenses, and you terminate your agreement with them within a specific period, you may have to pay back a portion, if not all of these expenses. Now, I’d say it’s rare for your continuing education, licensing, and dues. It’s very common with relocation expenses though, but I have seen in a contract before that you are required to pay back all of the reimbursements if you left within a specific period, so you want to make sure you’re definitely reading that carefully.
And then lastly, I would say probably the rarest that I’ve seen, but I have seen them in employment agreements before, is cell phone reimbursement. If you’re using a cell phone or they’re providing a cell phone to you to use when you’re providing your services or travel. If you must travel, sometimes it will give you a sort of mileage reimbursement or maintenance for your vehicle, things like that. So, those are kind of rare and kind of specific to someone who is going to be traveling a lot. But other than that, just to kind of recap, for sure, continuing education, license, dues, fees, DEA license, and relocation expenses, are going to be the basic categories of what you should get reimbursement for.
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