Health & Dental Insurance

Eligible Employees

Statewide Health Plans

As a state agency, we have the following health insurance plans to attend to our employees' health needs. The Commonwealth's Department of Human Resources Management (DHRM) administers all plans.

For in-depth descriptions and cost of premiums for each plan, including optional buy-ups, visit DHRM's Health Benefits website on plan choices. New employees are required to make health coverage selections within 30 calendar days of hire date.

Coverage Highlights

Plan Year: The plan year begins July 1 and ends June 30 of the following year.
Start of Coverage: Coverage for new employees begins on the first day of the month following the hire date. Coverage for new employees hired on the first of a month begins on the same day.
Insurance Cards: To obtain new or replacement insurance cards, please call their plan provider directly or visit their website.

Health Insurance Plans
Plan Provider	Health Plan	Availability
Anthem	COVA Care	Statewide and elsewhere
Anthem	COVA HDHP (High Deductible Health Plan)	Statewide and elsewhere
Aetna	COVA HealthAware	Statewide and elsewhere
Sentara Health (formerly Optima)	Sentara Health HMO	Regional, mostly in Hampton Roads
Kaiser	Kaiser Permanent Regional HMO	Regional, mostly in Northern Virginia

Statewide Dental Plan

Delta Dental of Virginia administers dental coverage, including diagnostic and preventive care. The Expanded Dental option covers, at an additional cost, primary care services such as fillings and root canals, orthodontic services, and major restorative services such as crowns, bridgework, implants, and dentures. To see if your dentist is in the Delta Premier network, or to search for a participating dentist, visit the Delta Dental website. Click on “Find a Dentist” and select the Delta Premier program.

Enrolling and Making Changes

Initial Enrollment: New employees must make their health insurance elections through Cardinal within 30 calendar days of their hire date. Failure to submit elections within 30 calendar days results in automatic waiver of coverage.

When adding dependents, Cardinal will indicate they are unapproved. After submitting documentation to UHR via our secure box portal, our Benefits team will update the dependent status to approved.
Qualifying Mid-year Event (QME): In addition to initial and open enrollment periods, employees may make changes within 60 days of a QME. Check out which life events are qualifying mid-year events and how to submit required documentation to University HR.
Open Enrollment: Open enrollment provides employees a chance to change health insurance election, including adding or removing dependents. Open enrollment is held in early May each year and changes become effective on July 1.

2024 Open Enrollment - W&M PowerPoint Presentation

Flexible Spending Accounts

A flexible spending account (FSA) is a tax-saving benefit that allows you to set aside a certain amount of money to pay for future out-of-pocket medical expenses (Health Care FSA) or eligible dependent care expenses (Dependent Care FSA.) You can contribute to one or both account types. You may want to consult with a tax advisor when determining your annual contribution amount.

You may enroll in an FSA even if you are not enrolled in a health insurance plan. Please note that FSAs do not carry over from year to year, so you must re-enroll each year during open enrollment to have access to your FSA in the next plan year.

For more information about FSAs, refer to the FSA Sourcebook and page 20 of Spotlight on Your Benefits.

The previous Flexible Spending Account Administrator, PayFlex, has rebranded as Inspira Financial as of 2024.

Here's what employees can expect:

Transitional messages added to the login page for PayFlex (payflex.com).
The same username and password can be used for the new Inspira Financial website as of January 2024.
The payflex.com website will automatically redirect to the new Inspira Financial website.
Current cards will continue to be used through June 30, 2024.
Employees who elect a Health Flexible Spending Account will be issued new cards as of July 1, 2024.

Once employees have received the new Inspira Financial FSA card, it will need to be activated at https://inspirafinancial.com/. The activation ID for your new Inspira Financial FSA card will be the last four digits of your Cardinal ID BEFORE the last two zeroes. Your Cardinal ID can be found in Banner Employee Self-Service under View/Update Personal Information. The eleven-digit ID is listed in the top right corner of this page.

As an example:

Cardinal ID: 00123456700
Inspira Card Activation ID: 4567

Premium Rewards

Premium Rewards are health plan incentives for COVA Care and COVA HealthAware participants who complete an online health assessment. For more information on Premium Rewards, refer to page 18 of Spotlight on Your Benefits.

Please note:

You and/or your spouse must be enrolled in COVA Care or COVA HealthAware before you can take the health assessment.
You must complete the assessment during open enrollment for savings to be effective July 1, 2024. If you miss completing the health assessment during open enrollment, you can take it anytime after the plan year begins on July 1.
If you are changing plans during open enrollment, you will need to wait until you receive your new insurance ID card to take the health assessment. Don’t worry, you can still complete the assessment once the new plan year has started.
Premium Rewards do not carry over year to year