I have 3 accounts from a hospital for 3 different

stays. They have combined the accounts into one and

send me a monthly statemet. I had agreeded with them

to pay $100 per month. So the problem is I have one

new account now and not the previous 3 that are on

QMEM. They easiest way would be to set up a new

account. What are your suggestions.

Thanks

My suggestion is to not deal with the one new account in QMEM. Your issue is focused heavily on tracking financial data which happens to be medically focuses. Unfortunately this type of tracking is ... how shall I put it ... the area of the program with the greatest oportunity for growth. :-D

I would leave the Expenses as they are, note in the billing notes of each that they have been combined into one financial accounts.

Then each month when you make a payment, apply the whole $100 to the earliest Expense that hasn't yet been fully paid, or the whole $100 to the Expense that you can close the soonest, or whatever you want, but splitting the payment across expenses only when absolutely necessary.

Then when you do make a split, adding billing notes to both Expenses across which the payments were split so that you can tell from either one where the rest of the $100 went.

If you don't track your personal finances in a financial package, then you can stop reading my answer here.

If you really want to track the financial aspect in all of it's gory detail, then you should probably do that in Quicken, Money, or whatever you use for your personal finances. On the Dates of Service, you would have transactions that are categorized as a Medical Expenses and increase the value of a liability account. This liability account is the new single account into which the hospital consolidated your old accounts. Then as you pay the $100, it would be created as a transfer from your checking account <or where ever the money comes from> into the liability account, thereby decreasing the balance.

If you do this, I would also add a billing note to the Expenses in QMEM which cross reference the accounts and categories in the finance file that corresponds to the Expenses.

Also note that all of this tracking in the personal finance software would be in addition to my recommendations above for tracking in QMEM.

-Tony

I have 3 accounts from a hospital for 3 different

stays. They have combined the accounts into one and

send me a monthly statemet. I had agreeded with them

to pay $100 per month. So the problem is I have one

new account now and not the previous 3 that are on

QMEM. They easiest way would be to set up a new

account. What are your suggestions.

We've got a similar situation. Usually, when we have an MD appointment, we get one invoice from the "medical group" (i.e., the MD's) and another from the "medical center" (i.e., the blood draw, labs, tests, radiology, whatever) for the same DOS. What distinguishes one DOS from another (besides the date) is that they'll create a new sub-account for each DOS.

HOWEVER, when my wife has her monthly chemo appointment, they post the med-center charges to a "revolving account" that gets re-used from 1 DOS to another. When a new calendar year rolls around, they'll start a new revolving account.

WELL, we're on a payment plan for the last 3 revolving accounts ... which the provider has rolled together.

SO, what I did is to reflect what the provider did ... I posted "payments" to the previous accounts that are closed and posted a new "service" (the transfer charge) to the one that holds the amounts outstanding. The net effect is that my balances in QMEM are correct AND my records reflect what's on the provider's web site. My monthly payments are, likewise, posted to the combined account.

db

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Edited by dbAnalyst at 08/02/2006 2:28 PM

Hi, db...

How do you mark these expenses as far as tax deductible or not? You need to be careful when you look at your tax deductible report which adds up all of your payments. If you "pay" the 3 accounts so as to close them and then open another expense which is the old 3 combined, and then pay against this one... your payments are now overstated. If all of these claims are marked as tax deductible you would not get the right answer on the tax deductible report.

There was no commment as to FSA reimbursement, so my comments are directed to the tax report.

Bee, first off, thanks for questioning what I did ... it caused me to go back and review the QMEM entries.

In my original post, I listed a "payment" ... which would be an inaccurate description.

What I actually enterred, was a "negative expense" in my wife's 8411 sub-account. In the "Expense Detail" window, the original entry (original line item) showed that I owed $2315.81. SO, to transfer the expense, I repeated the line item with all the numbers having the opposite sign ... thus zeroing out the expense. In the "receiving" account (the 8409 sub account) I added a new service line with the amounts from the original 8411 account.

Thus, nothing shows up on the Tax Report (as I'd expect), the history of the original DOS is preserved, and the amounts owed are moved to the combined account.

db

Thanks for the clarification! It makes sense to me now. :-)