Quicken medical expense software keeps track of family bills

It's troubling enough when you or a loved one suffers from a serous illness. But what really makes your blood pressure boil is poring through the mounting stack of confusing bills and insurance statements that typically accompany such ailments

If you have surgery, you might get separate invoices from the anesthesiologist, consulting doctor, surgeon, laboratory and hospital.

You might also receive baffling benefits statements from insurance companies rejecting various claims because the charges are deemed out of whack with nationwide standards or weren't considered "medically necessary." (Don't get me started. I'm convinced the initial insurance company reflex is to just say no.)

Questions remain even when insurance kicks in. Did they reimburse you directly or pay the medical provider? What do you owe out of pocket? Have you met your deductibles? Where does that leave your flexible spending account? What are your tax write-offs?

I've been testing a useful new program that can provide easy answers to all those questions. It's from Intuit, the maker of the popular Quicken personal finance software. Intuit's Quicken Medical Expense Manager is designed to help you organize and keep track of health-related bills for each family member, including pets.

The Windows-only software (version 98 SE or higher) might prove to be a godsend whether someone in your clan has a chronic condition or the common cold. By providing a central location for logging doctor's visits, benefits notices and prescriptions, you can keep tabs on whether bills are pending, or have been paid and/or reimbursed. The program flags possible tax deductions and includes a flexible spending calculator. If you have overpaid or get involved in a billing clash, it will even help you write dispute letters.

The software was developed by a former Quicken engineer whose son was born with a rare illness that required heart surgery.

Intuit is selling the $70 program at an introductory price of $50. It is available at www.quickenmedical.com.

I've been a huge fan of Quicken for years. In the days before anyone ever heard of the Web, I always maintained that Quicken -- next to word processing -- was the single best reason ordinary folks had for owning a PC. I still use the program religiously to balance my checkbook, track spending and to print out a year-end tax summary to submit to my accountant.

As with Quicken, Quicken Medical Expense Manager is easy to use and set up.

But my diagnosis of the program is that it suffers from one basic and curious omission: Even though it shares the Quicken name, it is not integrated with the regular Quicken. That means Quicken users like me will have to record medical transactions in two places. For example, inside Quicken, you would enter the check number and amount you paid to a particular doctor. The transaction would likely be tagged to a specific category, "medical" say, so you could track the purpose of the expense later.

Inside Quicken Medical Expense Manager, you would also record the amount paid, along with other relevant information surrounding the doctor visit. But there's no way to import and export data between the two Quickens.

Intuit's explanation is that regular Quicken is organized on a per-account basis (e.g., checking, savings). By contrast, Quicken Medical Expense Manager is done on a per-person basis (John Doe, Jane Doe, Child Doe, etc.).

Intuit has included a feedback link inside Quicken Medical Expense Manager, so I would expect anyone hooked on Quicken would ask that the two programs properly mesh in the future.

Of course, you need not be a Quicken devotee to benefit from Medical Expense Manager. The program is quite handy on its own, even as a simple repository for physician and insurance company addresses and phone numbers.

The first step after installing the software is to list each family member in your household you want to monitor and separately list each insurance company you deal with. Each family member name shows up on the left side of the main Medical Expense Manager screen next to a log of their various medical appointments. When a new medical expense comes in, you click on the person's (or pet's) name and fill in the appropriate fields: date of service, type of service, reason, service provider, insurance company, co-pay, additional payments and status. The status field tells you whether the bill has been paid, is pending or is in dispute. If it is in dispute or pending, you can indicate whether you, the provider or the insurance company are the reason for the holdup.

Once you've filled in doctors' names, insurance info and other fields for the first time, the program automatically enters the complete names whenever you subsequently type a few letters.

Clicking on a "details" icon lets you add more particulars about a medical expense: mileage driven to appointments, parking and tolls and your flexible spending account status.

There are separate areas to write medical and billing notes, with the ability to insert a date stamp. The beauty of all this is that if you have to call your insurance company or a medical provider's billing department, everything is at your fingertips.

Quicken Medical Expense Manager provides templates (via your word processor) if you must write a dispute letter. The program offers sample language; you put in actual names, dates and details. Included are templates for when your medical provider failed to credit a payment, billed for the wrong service or did not file an insurance claim. And there's a template for complaining to your insurance company when it didn't pay a claim or paid less then you expected.

The program isn't the cure-all for health-related stresses. But by helping control that pile of medical bills, Quicken Medical Expense Manager provides welcome relief.

E-mail: ebaig@usatoday.com

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