Changing Your Benefits Beyond Open Enrollment

If your spouse changes jobs or your family situation changes, you can make changes to your benefits without waiting until the next open enrollment period.

Situations like these are called qualifying events, and they are the only time outside of annual benefits enrollment that you can change your benefits coverage. If you have a qualifying event, you’ll need to act quickly—you have 31 days from the qualifying event to make changes to your benefits.

Qualifying events include:

• Birth/adoption (or placement for adoption) of a child.
• Marriage/divorce/change in domestic partnership
• Change in Medicare eligibility 
• Change in Medicaid/CHIP eligibility 
• Death of a spouse, domestic partner or dependent 
• Eligible child loses or acquired group medical or dental coverage 
• Change in spouse/domestic partner's employment status resulting in a loss/gain of other group health coverage or Open Enrollment at spouse/domestic partner's employer 
• Change in status from full-time to regular time or vice versa 

Remember these key reminders if you have a qualifying event:

• You can change your benefits coverage level for medical and dental benefits, but you cannot switch between plans. You will need to wait until open enrollment to change plans.
   
• There are certain qualifying events that may allow you to enroll in or increase your contributions to your Healthcare Flexible Spending Account.
   
• Log into My Total Access (only accessible from the Carilion network or the apps portal at apps.carilionclinic.org to make benefits changes connected to a qualifying event.
   
• Provide documentation confirming the eligibility of any dependents you enroll in the plan as a result of a qualifying event. You have 31 days from date of hire or date of qualifying event to provide the required documentation supporting the event. The required documentation may be submitted to: Human Resources by email as a .pdf document at hrservicecenter@carilionclinic.org before changes are effective.

For more information, including documentation, visit the Making Changes to Your Benefits page on the Benefits, Pay and Well-being hub on Inside Carilion.