The Letter

You may have already seen the letter that our Acting Director, Mr. Steven R. Cohen, recently sent to the heads of all departments and independent agencies. We also emailed a copy of his letter to members of the Human Resources Management Council. If you haven't already, please take a few minutes to read the attached letter.

Implementation Coordinators

Mr. Cohen asked department and agency heads to support the new long term care insurance program and designate an Implementation Coordinator to direct and coordinate implementation and roll-out activities for their department/agency. We expect the Implementation Coordinators to become supporters of the product and to be available throughout the enrollment period that starts sometime in 2002 and may extend into 2003. We will work with a representative team of Implementation Coordinators to develop a roll-out strategy that will be successful and doable from an agency perspective.

Federal Benefits Officers

We recognize the vital role that Federal Benefits Officers and other agency human resources professionals already play with respect to retirement and insurance benefits for employees. You may be asked to serve as an Implementation Coordinator, or you could be working with someone else. Either way, I imagine you'll be involved.

The Good News

As we envision the program, we are NOT expecting agency human resources professionals to become conversant with long term care issues and be responsible for educating their employees about the new program. This is very different from the way we handle the retirement, health and life insurance programs. In those programs, the HR professionals ARE the front-line for providing information about the programs.

We envision that this new program will take an entirely different direction -- the long term care insurance carrier will be responsible for educating employees and answering their questions using such avenues as auditorium meetings, the web site, a toll-free phone number, satellite broadcasts, pamphlets, enrollment kits, etc.

But we are NOT expecting HR professionals to become long term care experts. We are not expecting you and other HR professionals to converse knowledgeably with employees about activities of daily living, non-forfeiture benefits, inflation protection, claims triggers, estate planning, etc. That's what the insurance carrier will do. What we will expect is that when an employee approaches you with a question, you would know to refer him/her to the toll-free number (not set up yet), refer him/her to the website, the pamphlets, the schedule of employee meetings, etc. HR professionals will be conduits in directing employees where to go for answers, as opposed to answering the questions directly.

And we will tell you what the information channels will be (through Benefits Administration Letters, the annual Federal Benefits Conference, our new email listserv (described below), our HR page on the long term care website (www.opm.gov/insure/ltc/hr.htm), etc.)

We already know that we WILL need your help with:

• arranging for the distribution of educational and marketing materials,
• setting up employee briefings,
• showing and possibly participating in satellite broadcasts, and
• interacting with our insurance partners and us during the open enrollment period.

Listserv

As you'll also see in the attached letter, we set up an automated email "listserv" for human resources professionals. We'd like each benefits officer and designated Implementation Coordinator to subscribe to the listserv. We plan to use it throughout the educational and enrollment process. We're also asking human resources professionals at field installations to subscribe to the listserv to receive information about the upcoming open enrollment period. Instructions on how to subscribe are included in the attached letter.

As soon as a substantial number of people subscribe, we will begin sending out detailed information via the listserv and asking for feedback on a number of items.

We sure appreciate your support of this exciting new program!

Frank D. Titus Assistant Director    for Long Term Care

Attachment

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