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October 12, 2009
To Ohio University Faculty and Staff,
As part of the university-wide effort to reduce administrative costs and focus resources on the academic enterprise, the Benefits Office in Human Resources has reduced its staff. An important aspect of the planning to implement this reduction centered on continuing high quality service to Ohio University faculty and staff with fewer internal resources.
A fundamental component of Ohio University's agreements with our health insurance carriers is the provision of effective customer service to our employees. Each of these insurance companies has dedicated customer service units, providing expert staff available for extended hours to answer questions and resolve issues in a timely manner.
Effective January 1, 2010 all Ohio University employees will directly contact the expert staff at our health insurance providers with questions regarding:
* whether a service is covered,
* how or when a service is covered,
* insurance company payment decisions including your copay amounts,
* services for which payment was denied by an insurance company
* predetermination of benefits prior to receiving services,
* health care provider (physician, hospital, etc.) network status,
* requests for new or additional insurance cards,
* flexible spending accounts issues.
The UHR Benefits Office will continue to directly assist faculty and staff with benefits enrollment options and eligibility, premiums, questions regarding Retirement, Life Insurance, and Disability Insurance, and to assist employees with official appeals of insurance company decisions. Assistance with official appeals will be considered by UHR Benefits only after the employee has contacted the insurance company to discuss an issue (or has made a good faith attempt to do so) and allowed sufficient time for the insurance company to respond.
To facilitate the process of gathering information on our medical benefits, we will make plan documents available online in a searchable PDF format in the coming weeks. In addition, we will frequently convey essential information on our plans to all employees. Employees are also encouraged to enroll in the MyAnthem service at http://www.anthem.com. MyAnthem allows employees to view their medical claims and payment decisions made by Anthem, view and print official explanations of benefits, as well as submit email questions regarding benefits.
During this time of transition, the Benefits Office is available to assist employees with any benefits related inquiries. However we encourage you to start communicating directly with these companies now.
Following is a link containing contact information for direct benefits service: http://www.ohio.edu/hr/benefits/contacts.cfm
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
Cordially,
Greg Fialko
Director of Benefits
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