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Benefits Enrollment and Changes

All benefits enrollments and changes are completed via People First. People First provides benefit eligible employees the ability to make benefit selections and changes online during open enrollment, new hire onboarding and IRS qualifying events.  

IRS Qualifying Change in Status Event (CIS) -  The Department of State Group Insurance (DSGI)health plans have a pre-tax status and are therefore governed by IRS regulations. Once you enroll in coverage for medical, dental, vision, or a Flexible Spending Account (FSA), you cannot make changes to these plans outside of an Open Enrollment period unless you experience a Qualifying Change in Status Event (also known as a Change in Status). 

You have 60 days from the date of a qualified change of status event to complete changes to your benefits that are consistent with that event. If you do not make your eligible changes during the 60-day status change period, your changes cannot be made until the next Annual Enrollment in October with an effective date of January of the following year. 

Qualifying events include: 

  • Birth or adoption
  • Marriage
  • Divorce, legal separation, dissolution of a domestic partnership or annulment
  • Death of spouse or dependent
  • Dependent child turns 26
  • Employee of spouse employment change from part-time to full-time, or full-time to part-time
  • Employment termination or commencement for the employee, a spouse, or a dependent
  • Gain or Loss of other health coverage (including HealthCare Exchange coverage)
  • Medical child-support order
  • Medicare eligibility

Change of coverage will begin the first of the month after the month in which the state (or People First receives) a full month's permium. Coverage always begins on the first day of the month. 

If you are adding a dependent to your coverage, you will also be required to submit dependent eligibility documents, dependent social security numbers and birth dates during your enrollment. All dependent verification documents must be scanned and uploaded during your enrollment session to People First. Please view the Dependent Verification listing for more information.

Any questions regarding your benefit eligibility, benefit plan summaries or cost of plans, please refer to our Elgibility and Enrollment webpage or you can contactPeople First at 1-866-663-4735 or log into your People First account at People First

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