If you’ve ever had a medical emergency within moments it seems like you start getting bombarded with paper whether someone is asking you to fill something out or bills start coming in the mail. Some of you might even have two or more insurance companies and now with HSA accounts we even have a different bank account to deal with.
To downsize your medical paper pile up many of the same money matters rules apply:
1. Check your insurance provider’s website to see if you can receive EOB’s via email instead of paper form. Whichever format you get your EOB delivered to you check it with the bill to make sure it is right and then you can decide whether to toss or scan. I personally would scan it if it relates to an ongoing illness and toss if it is just a routine physical.
2. If you are deducting medical expenses on your taxes you need to keep your receipts for prescriptions and medical supplies. If you are storing everything electronically I would scan the receipts as well.
3. You can store most of your medical information on the computer and download it to a flash drive if you need to take the information with you.
4. If you have an HSA account opt to have your statements emailed to you instead of mailing.
Generally I would treat medical information as you would your financial files. I would personally keep the financial portion for 7 years but keep a file on hand to organize specific information regarding ailments and treatments taken.
I will go into more specifics on setting up electronic and paper based systems to organize your medical files another time. For now I want you to just think about how much paper you can cut back on by following these simple tips. Going Paper Less won’t work for all but for those of you able to take on the challenge I hope this series has been helpful so far.
Next I will share with you how I am going Paper Less with my photos and maybe you can too. For the full series click here… Paper Less Living: Simple Solutions For Downsizing Your Paper Pile Up
