Don’t Leave Easy Money on the Table by Forgetting to Request Your Mileage!

If you are injured at work in Iowa and use a personal vehicle to get to medical appointments, you are entitled to reimbursement for your round trip mileage – not your gas receipt, which is too low, and not the outrageous amount of money your “friend” charged you to drive you to your appointment. Try to avoid those friends or ask the carrier to provide transportation for you!
The amount owed to you per mile changes each year on July 1. The current reimbursement rate for mileage is .575 cents per mile. So, if your appointment is 5 miles one way, then you are owed 10 miles * .575 or $5.75. That’s the price of a Happy Meal these days! Unless you want to go around giving out free meals to insurance companies, this is money you should not leave on the table!
For just ONE client, I recently totaled up over $2,000.00 worth of back-due medical mileage that was owed over the course of a year and one-half, but not paid. My client had no idea it was owed to her and of course insurance was not going to volunteer that information to my client.
If you do not have an attorney, get your adjuster’s email and send him or her an email after EVERY appointment and request your mileage. Why should you front all that money for an insurance company for month’s on end, or in some cases – years!!! If you have an attorney, get your attorney to turn this in for you!
Here at Zupp & Zupp, we prefer to track our clients’ mileage on Excel, but if you don’t do Excel, check with the adjuster for your case because many carriers have their own mileage form that you can fill out and submit whenever it works for you. Some people submit after each visit, some weekly, some monthly – there are no rules on that. Just make sure you fill it out completely and accurately so that insurance has no excuse to not pay you. No matter what you do, make sure you don’t leave that easy money on the table!