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Reimburse travel costs from study participants

[Written by Johanna on 2019/07/24]

Table of content

  1. What do we reimburse?
    • Travel costs
      • By car
      • By train
      • By plane
    • Hotel costs
  2. Prepare the documents
  3. Send it to Zentraler Rechnungseingang
  4. Common problems and questions

What do we reimburse?

These criteria might be different for every study. Regarding the LE-study, we follow these rules:

Travel costs

Travel costs are fully reimbursed (journey there and back)

  1. By car: When a patient arrives by car, we either reimburse the costs for the gas (receipt from the petrol station) or we estimate the costs with a travelling allowance of 0,20€/km.

Travelling allowance:

  1. Go to https://www.falk.de/routenplaner?data=eyJncCI6IjUyLjUxNjY5MywxMy4zOTk5OTQiLCJneiI6MTJ9
  2. Type in the home address of the patient and Charité address (Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin) to calculate the route.
  3. Chose the shortest route and go to “Details”.
  4. Falk Routenplaner already offers the possibility to also calculate the costs of the travel (“Kosten”).
  5. Type in 0,20€ as “Reisekosten” (travel expenses).
  6. Print it with Strg+P (tick only the box for “Optionen”), we do not need the map and the precise route description).
  7. Because we reimburse the journey there and back, take the calculated costs times two J
  1. By train: We reimburse tickets in second class.
  2. By plane: If the costs for the plane ticket do not exceed the costs that we would reimburse by car, this works as well.

Regarding accompanying persons: If a patient says that the participation of the study is only possible when she is accompanied by another person (partner, parent, friend, etc.), we normally also reimburse the costs for the second person under the same conditions. Inform Carsten about that.

Hotel costs

Hotel costs are reimbursed for people for whom it is not possible to arrive and depart at the same day due to a long journey. Inform Carsten if this is the case. Hotel costs are reimbursed up to 60€. Regarding accompanying persons, see above.

Hotels that are close by:

Mikon Eastgate

Motel one

Riverside City Hotel

The patients are responsible for booking the hotel.

Prepare the documents

You find the form in the _LE_Orga-Folder.

Filling out the form is quite self-explanatory: Fill in the name and the address of the study participant and the banking details. If possible, fill in everything you can on the computer. There are many illegible numbers and letters when some people do it handwritten.

Example see here:

As it already says on the form, we have to attach all receipts and tickets to the form. For that, scan the form with the original signature and all the tickets/receipts. Merge all the images into one pdf-file  (Very important! Otherwise, your request will not be processed).  You can use pdf24 or any other program you like.

Send it to Zentraler Rechnungseingang

Send a mail to zentraler-rechnungseingang@charite.de and attach the ONE pdf to the mail.

The text could sound like this:

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

Könnten Sie bitte die Erstattung der Kosten von unserer Studienteilnehmerin XXX übernehmen? Das DM-Konto ist wie angegeben XXX.

Herzlichen Dank!

Beste Grüße,

Johanna

Normally, the money is transferred to the bank account of the study participant within 5-7 weekdays. Keep in mind that Carsten has to approve it first.

Common problems and questions

Should there be problems with the reimbursement, something like this happens:

  1. You forgot the attachment/ some information is in the wrong format/ something is missing: You get a mail from Zentraler Rechnungseingang saying that they cannot process your request. Do it again J
  2. The banking details are wrong: Carsten gets a message and forwards it to you.
  3. The patient writes a mail and complains about the money not being there: Write a mail to kreditorenbuchhaltung@charite.de and ask for updates. If Carsten is on holiday or there are other reasons why he might not have approved it: Ask Carsten.

Contact person for the case that you desperately want to talk to somebody:

Marina Erxleben from Geschäftbereich Finanzen normally takes care of our money: Geschäftsbereich Finanzen Tel. 672488

You can find all the information also in intranet: https://intranet.charite.de/fi/download_und_service/finanz_und_rechnungswesen/kreditorenbuchhaltung/

(I just read that they have different criteria mentioned there regarding the name of the document. I never followed these (and never had problems) but you might do that in the future. Also, the documents seem to have been updated.)