Fall 2023
Protect with Optional Life insurance | Alberta Blue Cross®
We know that the wellbeing of your employees matters to you. Although a comprehensive benefit plan is critical to support your workforce, have you considered adding an additional layer of protection with Group Optional Life coverage? Life is full of changes and so are the needs of your employees. By giving them more choice over their life insurance, you showcase a commitment to personalized benefits that cater to a diverse, ever-changing workforce.
Invest in Group Critical Illness Insurance | Alberta Blue Cross®
Life can be unpredictable and dealing with a critical illness can be extremely challenging—physically, emotionally and financially. With Group Critical Illness Insurance, employers can help reduce this burden by focusing on recovery from conditions like cancer, stroke or heart attack. Employees who are more financially secure are more likely to experience improved mental health—resulting in a healthier and happier workforce.
Travel insurance: all you need to know | Alberta Blue Cross®
Nothing beats the peace of mind of knowing you’re protected if the unexpected happens when travelling, but travel insurance can be confusing. It’s important your employees understand what travel coverage they have under through group benefits plan to determine what additional add-ons they may need for their upcoming trips.
Summer 2023
Virtual care
Accessing timely care can be a challenge thanks to busy schedules and many hospitals experiencing long waits. Virtual care makes it easy for your employees to get the support they need, when they need it, through a smartphone, tablet or computer. Once registered on our member site or app, your employees and their dependents can use the TELUS Health mobile app or website to connect with a health care provider 24/7 in English or French. Virtual care is great for anyone who may have a non-emergent health concern, including those with reduced mobility or even people evacuated from their homes due to a natural disaster.
Medical underwriting update
We’ve continued to improve the online medical underwriting experience for our members, which launched in February of this year. Your employees’ spouses can now complete their underwriting forms and requirements by logging in to the member site and receive all notifications through email. You can access self-serve reporting on the plan administrator site for medical underwriting decisions, which replaces individual decision letters. These updates further increase flexibility and convenience for you and your employees and improve underwriting turnaround times. These enhancements also allow your employees to update their smoker status at any time through the member site.
Member self-enrolment update
Effective immediately, any of your employees who don’t complete the self-enrolment process will not be automatically removed from our system after 63 days. Instead, they will remain partially enrolled indefinitely while continuing to receive emails to remind them to complete their enrolment through our member site. You will receive an email at the beginning of the month with a list of your employees who have not yet completed enrolment, as well as a 6-month follow-up email. The goal of this process change is to provide a safety net for your employees to allow them to still access their benefits should they complete their enrolment. For questions and concerns, please call our contact center at 1-866-498-5925.
Top 10 health conditions based on drug claims for 2022
Understanding what conditions are impacting your employees and organization, as well as the resulting cost, is important. We regularly monitor and review drug claiming information to provide insight into the prevalence of health conditions in our populations and the associated costs that can impact plan sustainability in the future. For example, we noted an increase in medications used for the treatment of diabetes and ADHD in 2022.
Alberta Blue Cross® teams up with United Way to make a Period Promise Pledge
In celebration of Menstrual Hygiene Day on May 28, we teamed up with the United Way to sign and sponsor their Period Promise Pledge. Period Promise is a multi-levelled approach to address period poverty in our communities. By working with governments, businesses, schools and other organizations, the United Way wants to address period poverty and access to menstruation products for vulnerable people while fighting stigma around menstruation. Almost 1 quarter of people who menstruate in Canada say they have struggled to afford menstrual products for themselves or their children. Our first step in joining this pledge is to provide free menstrual products in our workplace and encourage other organizations to do the same.