What Nurse Practitioner Expenses Should an Employer Pay For? | Nurse Expenses

What business expenses should nurse practitioners 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.

AANP and Continuing Education Paid For?

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.

Nurse Practitioner Offer Letters from Employers

What should be included benefit-wise in an offer letter for a nurse practitioner? An offer letter is normally a step one of your employment with your prospective future employer. In the offer letter, it’s normally going to outline a couple of things. One is going to explain what your position is. If you’re specialized, what kind of services are you going to be providing, what location and what setting, is it a hospital, clinic, hybrid? Kind of just depends on your specialty. Normally, there will also be something in there roughly about your schedule. Sometimes it will just say 40 hours, or it may break it up if you’re helping in the OR, or a hospital setting will say 70% this, 30% in the clinic.

And it may discuss if you have any call duties, so like nights or weekends, that’s typically included in an offer letter as well. Now, let’s talk about the benefits. What benefits are going to be included in that offer letter? Let’s start with some of your health benefits. Normally, you don’t get a detailed outline or even a benefits package at this level when you’re just first receiving your offer letter. Once you receive the offer letter, it will normally just state that you will get some sort of health insurance, vision, dental, life insurance disability, maybe long term, short term, and then some type of retirement. And it’s not going to say a detailed explanation of how much each policy is going to pay out, like all that stuff. That’s going to be in a benefits summary or a benefits package. Sometimes that’s included later in your employment agreement, but when we’re just at the level of your offer letter, it just states this is what they provide.

So, that’s going to be the number one, probably it’s just going to outline them briefly, just say the name of what it is. Then the next set of benefits you’re sort of like your ancillary benefits. Those are normally included also in your offer letter. That’s going to include any type of continuing education allowance, licensing, fees, dues, especially a DEA license right now. Those are normally always included in there. If you have any type of board expenses that they’re going to be paying for, that also would be in there, and then also for sure, it will be your compensation. Probably the number one thing you want to look at is what is your compensation and how is it calculated? And then PTO time will also be in there as well.

How much you’re offered if you have any additional PTO days for continuing education, that’s something you always want to look out for as well. And then any type of signing bonus or relocation bonus, all of those will be in the offer letter. The purpose of the offer letter is to start the process of negotiating and to start the process of you becoming an employee. Now, if you sign an offer letter, you’re not agreeing to become employed by the practice. You’re agreeing to enter into negotiations for your employment. And normally, offer letters are pretty good, too. They’re going to be forthcoming with your benefits because they want to entice you to become an employee. So, they’re going to show you all the good stuff right up front.

Your benefits should always be included. You’re going to look for all those health benefits like we just talked about retirement but go further and look and make sure there’s continuing education, there’s reimbursement for those expenses like dues, licensing fees, DEA license, any type of boards that you may be taking, all that kind of stuff you’ll want to look for as well. And then lastly, always look for PTO, how much you’re getting, and look, are you able to calculate it? Sometimes it gets a little confusing. I know it’s popular right now to do a four-day work week, but when your PTO time is calculated in hours, sometimes that can get a little confusing. So, you may want to reach out and ask them to clarify what that is, and how many weeks is that with your four-day work week if that makes sense.

Nurse Practitioners and PTO

How much PTO should a nurse practitioner receive? The short answer is it really kind of varies. And it really depends on how long you’ve been there. Have you accumulated seniority? Have you been practicing for a long period of time? Where are you in the country? It really depends on a plethora of factors, but some things to really consider that I see honestly day to day with PTO is if you have a four-day work week, sometimes your PTO is less than it would normally be. And that’s just the employer thinking that because you have an extra day off every week, therefore you’re entitled to less PTO.

I would disagree with this, so it’s something that you would maybe want to advocate and double-check. Also, another thing you want to consider is what is in your PTO amount of time, sometimes you’re given just several days and that includes vacations, holidays, CEs or continuing education, and sick time. When you get that initial number of PTO, it looks great. You’re like, wow, going on vacation, but you want to be careful because you need to see what’s included in your PTO time. You should always receive PTO for continuing your education. And that should be an additional three to five days. You also want to account for all of your national holidays, you should have that time off, or you should be compensated for working on those holidays, additional compensation. And then normally, it’s anywhere from like three to five weeks, I would say is average starting out.

Consultation with Chelle Law

When your contract is reviewed by an experienced attorney, you will find great financial benefits which end up outweighing the cost of the review. If you are in need of assistance with an employment agreement or contract review schedule a Nurse Practitioner Contract Review with Chelle Law today!