Flex Credits for Western Employees
Making the best use of your Health Care Spending Account and your Professional Expense Reimbursement Account
Western provides many of its employees with two spending accounts that can be used to cover a wide variety of expenses.
The two accounts are:
- Health Care Spending Account (HCSA) – this account can be used to cover medical and dental expenses that are not covered (or only partially covered) by your Extended Health and Dental plan. For instance, you can use it to help pay for prescription dispensing costs, the portion of a dental bill you would normally pay for yourself, for physiotherapists and massage therapists, and a wide variety of other expenses.
- Professional Expense Reimbursement account (PER) – this account has been established to help pay for professional expenses including conference registration, travel and accommodation, special computer software, journal or professional publication subscriptions and other expenses.
In addition to the two accounts above, Western also offers many employees “Flex Credits”. These credits can be allocated to either of the two accounts mentioned above.
Tax rules stipulate that a decision about how much you allocate to each account must be made in the year prior to the year the account is utilized. For instance, in November 2012 you have been asked to make a decision about how you will allocate your funds for use in 2013. If you do not make a decision on how to allocate those funds by December 5, 2012, you still will receive the funds, but a default allocation is made on your behalf, and you may not change it once the deadline has passed.
The Health Care Spending Account and the Professional Expense Reimbursement Account are available to the following employee groups. Choose your employee group to get details.
Some helpful links
PER/ HCSA FAQs – answers to frequently asked questions about the PER and HCSA
PER Claim Forms – choose the correct form for your employee group under the heading “Professional Development/Expense”
HCSA Claim Form – use this form to make claims against your Health Care Spending Account and Extended Health Care Benefits.
Manulife login – by logging in to your Manulife account using your Group Plan Number, your Member Number and your Manulife password, you can access information about coverage and claims, including HCSA claims. To view your current HCSA balance, choose "My Benefits", then the link that says "HCSA Balance”.
My Human Resources
- Before the deadline (December 5, 2012 for 2013 allocations) go to "My Human Resources" to make your Flex Credit allocations. Under "My To Do List" at the top of the page, you will see "Health Care Spending Account and Professional Expense Reimbursement Allowance." By selecting this, you may view elections from past years and make your 2013 elections.
- You can also go to"my Human Resources" anytime to review your base amounts in your HCSA and PER, as well as Flex Credit allocations from the current and past years by choosing "Benefits", "Benefits Summary", "Health Care Spending Account".
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