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10212 - 112 Street NW Suite 900, 9925 - 109 Street NW
EDMONTON AB T5K 1M4 EDMONTON AB T5K 2J8
JOINT COMMUNICATION
Multi Employer/HSAA Collective Agreement
Flexible Spending Account
The Multi-Employer/HSAA Collective Agreement includes a new Flexible Spending
Account (FSA) that will come into effect on January 1, 2009.
The FSA replaces the current Health Benefits Spending Account and the Professional
Development Allocation in the Collective Agreement. In addition to providing coverage
for health benefits and professional development, the FSA also allows eligible
employees to allocate funds to support personal wellness, family care and to make
contributions to an RRSP.
Alberta Health Services and the HSAA believe that the FSA will be an effective
mechanism for supporting the personal needs and goals of employees throughout their
work life. The FSA allows employees to choose how to allocate available dollars on an
annual basis.
Alberta Health Services and the HSAA also believe in the principle that this resource be
used to the fullest extent possible by employees. The parties are convinced that higher
levels of usage will maximize the goal of meeting the personal and professional needs
of employees.
Calculation
The FSA for each eligible employee is available effective January 1 of each calendar
year. The FSA is calculated as follows:
$1,250 per eligible employee, plus
$1,250 per eligible full-time employee, pro-rated for each eligible part-time
employee based on their FTE as of November 1.
The pro-rated portion of the FSA will increase to $1,500 effective January 1, 2010.
Eligibility
The FSA is provided to full-time regular and part-time regular employees that are
employed in a benefits eligible position as of November 1.
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F l e x i b l e S p e n d i n g A c c o u n t
For additional information on eligibility for the FSA, please refer to the attached
document titled, “Flexible Spending Account, Eligibility”.
Utilization
As outlined in the Letter of Understanding, the FSA may be used for the following
purposes:
1. Reimbursement for expenses associated with professional development. This
category is intended to financially assist employees who are improving their
professional development through continuing education. Claims for professional
development expenses are payable upon the first day of the course.
2. Reimbursement for the cost of professional registration or voluntary association
fees related to the employees discipline. Claims for reimbursement of fees are
based on the first day of the registration year.
3. Reimbursement for health and dental expenses that are eligible medical expenses
in accordance with the Income Tax Act and are not covered by the benefit plans
specified in Article 25.01(b)(v) and 25.01(b)(vi) of the Collective Agreement.
Please refer to the attached document, “Allowable Medical Expenses” for a full
list of items that are covered and excluded.
4. Contribution to a Registered Retirement Savings Plan administered by the
employer. Where an employee chooses to allocate FSA funds to an RRSP, the
contribution will be made a single lump sum payment in January.
5. Wellness expenses which may include, but are not limited to, such expenditures
such as fitness centre memberships and fitness equipment.
6. Family Care including day care and elder care.
For additional information on eligible expenses and exclusions, please refer to the
attached document, “Flexible Spending Account, Eligible Expense Guidelines and
Exlusions”.
Allocation
Each employee who is eligible for the FSA effective November 1 of each year will be
required to make an allocation of their available FSA by December 1 of each year. This
allows eligible employees to choose how to utilize their FSA each year based on their
own needs and goals.
Eligible employees will be required to allocate their available FSA between three
available categories:
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F l e x i b l e S p e n d i n g A c c o u n t
1. Deposit to an RRSP administered by the Employer
2. Reimbursement for health and dental expenses
3. Reimbursement for items related to Wellness, Professional Development or
Family Care
Eligible employees will receive an Allocation Form from their employer following
November 1. The completed Allocation Form must be completed and retuned to the
employer by December 1.
Terminated Employees
The Letter of Understanding allows employees who terminate their employment and
subsequently commence employment with another employer under the same Collective
Agreement within the same calendar year to maintain her FSA.
It is important to note that employees are only entitled to one FSA during a calendar
year, even if they move between Employers. Employees that terminate their
employment will have two months following the end of the month in which they
terminate to utilize their remaining FSA. If an employee that terminates wishes to have
her FSA maintained with another employer, it will be the responsibility of the employee
to request information on the amount of her remaining FSA from the original employer.
HSAA Joint Communication - Flexible Spending Account
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Flexible Spending Account
Eligibility
Credits are calculated on based on position held as of November 1; once a year allocation
for January – December
Employees hired between November 1 and December 31 provided with a full allocation
based on the FTE of the position. Employees hired after January 1 to be provided with a
pro – rated allocation based on the number of full months remaining in the calendar year.
Retroactive or salary increases do not change the amounts
Regular Full-time
Regular Part-time .39 FTE (15 hours)
Regular employees working in a temporary position (FSA to be calculated based on the
FTE of the temporary position)
Employees on approved leave of absence as of November 1 are eligible for the full
allocation
Those on STD/LTD can accumulate and access credits only up to the 30 month point of
their disability
Eligibility for Employees working in multiple regular positions (including multi site positions)
determined based on the combined full time equivalency of the positions
Who is not eligible
Casual
Regular part time employees working less than 15 hours per week
Temporary employees
Disabled employees in excess of 30 months from date of disability
Termination
Plan ceases end of the month of termination
Days to submit claims: 2 months from the end of the month of termination
Dependents
Revenue Canada Definition of Dependents for the HCSA
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Flexible Spending Account
Eligible Expense Guidelines and Exclusions
(Wellness and fitness coverage is employee only; date of receipt)
Wellness
Health Supplements
Alternative Healing Treatments and Therapies
Weight Management Programs - Registration only - Food not covered
Professional Health Assessment
Stress Management Program
Smoking Cessation Program
Fitness
Fitness facility fees (excluding golf membership)
Certified Personal Fitness Trainer
Fitness/exercise Video, DVD, Books
Instructed classes
Registration fees for Athletic Fitness events
Sports equipment excluding golf
Sports instruction fees, lessons, classes or courses
Self-defense classes and equipment
Fitness Equipment
Athletic footwear
Family Care
Daycare (regulated and approved)
Elder Care
Respite Care
Professional Development
(first day of course or professional registration, not date of receipt)
Courses/classes
Seminars
Conference
Books (course related)
Tuition
Fees for designations/registrations/associations
Professional Journals and Subscriptions
Travel expenses associated with course attendance
Page 5
Software related to professional development
RRSP
One lump sump payment
Exclusions
Golf (only instruction is allowed)
Clothing
Wellness claims for dependents
Recreational activity
Clubs where physical activity is not the singular focus
Out of town travel for wellness/fitness
Classroom or correspondence by a non credited institution
Services provided by a family member
Nutrition replacements, food and supplements
Domestic services
Costs related to after school care activities
Computer hardware
Page 6
HEALTH CARE SPENDING ACCOUNT
ALLOWABLE MEDICAL EXPENSES
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
• Acupuncturist (if a qualified medical • Oculist
practitioner or, in Quebec only, a licensed • Optician
acupuncturist) • Optometrist
• Audiologist • Orthopedist
• Care of a blind person • Osteopath
• Care in training or special school, institution • Pediatrician
or other place for a mentally or physically • Physician/Medical Doctor
handicapped individual. • Physiotherapist
• Chiropodist • Plastic Surgeon
• Chiropractor • Podiatrist
• Christian Science practitioner • Practical Nurse (medical services only)
• Dental Hygienist (if authorized to price under • Psychiatrist
provincial laws) • Psychoanalyst
• Dental Mechanic (for the making or repairing • Psychologist (if licensed by province to
of a complete upper or lower denture) provide therapy or rehabilitation)
• Dentist • Registered Nurse
• Dermatologist • Surgeon
• Dietician • Speech Therapist (pathological or audiological
• Electrolysis or hair removal performed by a impediments only)
medical practitioner • Therapist, including registered massage
• Full time attendants or care in a nursing home therapists
(if confined to a bed or wheelchair) • Professional Tutor, for a patient with learning
• Gynecologist disability or mental impairment, if the need is
• Neurologist certified by a medical practitioner.
• Naturopathist • Alberta Midwives
• Obstetrician
• Occupational Therapist
LABORATORY EXAMINATIONS AND TESTS
• Blood Tests • Stool Examination
• Cardiographs • Urine Analyses
• Metabolism Tests • X-ray examinations
• Spinal Fluid Tests
DENTAL SERVICES
• Dental X-rays • Oral Surgery
• Extracting teeth • Straightening teeth
• Filling teeth • Prosthetic appliances
• Gum Treatment
Page 7
HOSPITAL SERVICES
• Anesthetist • Preventative diagnostic, lab & radiological
• Hospital bills procedures
• Oxygen masks, tent • Semi-private, preferred, or private
• Meals or lodging in an alcoholism or drug accommodation expenses in hospital
addiction centre • Use of operating room
• Payments to a licensed private hospital • Vaccines
• X-ray technician
MEDICINES
• Cost of prescriptions • Vitamin B12 - for pernicious anemia
• Insulin or substitutes • Any medicine or drug purchased by you, your
• Tapes or tablets for sugar content tests by spouse, or a dependant, as prescribed by a
diabetics, if the procedure has been required medical practitioner or dentist and as recorded
by a physician by a licensed pharmacist.
• Oxygen
• Liver extract - injectable for pernicious anemia
APPARATUS AND MATERIALS (and repairs thereto and replacement batteries): Note that all items
prescribed by regulation, as indicated by an asterisk (*) below, must be prescribed by a medical practitioner
whereas those items not so indicated need only be prescribed if the statute so required (which it only
occasionally does, as indicated.)
• Artificial Eye • Iliostomy pads
• Artificial Kidney machine, including • Laryngeal speaking aid
reasonable installation, home alteration and • Needles and syringes*
operating costs • Orthopedic shoes and boots*
• Artificial Limb • Orthotics prescribed by a medical practitioner
• Blood sugar measuring devices for diabetics & • Oxygen Tent and Equipment*
infusion pumps • Rocking bed for polio victim
• Brace for limb • Spinal brace
• Catheters, catheter trays, tubing, or other • Sunlight Lamp to treat individuals with
products required by persons who are Sunlight Deficiency Disorder
incontinent by virtue of illness, injury, or • Truss for hernia
affliction • Wheelchair & Walker
• Colostomy pads • Wigs made for individuals who have suffered
• Contact lenses - prescribed abnormal loss owing to disease, accident or
• Crutches medical treatment*
• Diapers, disposable briefs, catheters, catheter • Any apparatus or material - where payment
trays, tubing or other products required by was made directly to the doctor, dentist, nurse
persons who are incontinent by virtue of or hospital
illness, injury or affliction • Any device, including replacement parts,
• Eyewear, to correct vision, prescribed by designed exclusively for use by an individual
medical practitioner or optometrist who is suffering from a chronic respiratory
• Hearing Aids ailment or a severe chronic immune system
• Heart monitoring or pacing devices* disregulation*
• Hospital bed if required in home (including • 50% of the cost of an air conditioner
prescribed attachments) prescribed by a medical practitioner for an
• Infusion pumps, including disposable individual with a severe chronic ailment,
peripherals, used in the treatment of diabetes* disease or disorder, to a limit of $1,000.*
• Iron lung
Page 8
• Any power-operated guided chair installation • Any device to aid the hearing of a deaf person
to be used solely in a stairway* including bone-conduction telephone
• Power-operated lifts or transportation receivers, extra-loud audible signals, and
equipment designed exclusively for use by or devices to permit volume adjustment of
for a disabled individual to allow the telephone equipment above normal levels.
individual access to different areas of a • Television closed caption decoders for the
building or to assist the individual to gain deaf*
access to a vehicle or to place his o her • Sign language interpretation services, where
wheelchair in or on a vehicle (apparently this the payment is made to a person engaged in
includes track electrical systems to more the business of providing such services on
quadriplegics about the home (e.g. from bed to behalf of a patient who has a speech or hearing
bath)* impairment.
• Reasonable expense relating to renovations or • Any equipment and accessory that enable a
alteration to a dwelling of a patient who lacks deaf or mute person to make and receive
normal physical development or has a severe telephone calls including visual ringing
and prolonged mobility impairment (one that indicators, acoustic couplers, teletypewriters.
may be expected to last 12 months or more), to Amounts paid in providing additional
enable the patient to gain access to, or to be equipment and accessories to others in order to
mobile or functional within, the dwelling. make telephone communication possible with
• Reasonable expenses relating to alterations to those other persons are also allowed as
the driveway of the principle place of medical expenses*
residence of a patient who has severe and • Electronic speech synthesizers that enable
prolonged mobility impairment to facilitate the mute individual to communicate using a
patient’s access to a bus. portable keyboard*
• Reasonable moving expense (not to exceed • Optical scanners or similar devices designed to
$2000) of a patient who lacks normal physical be used by a blind individual to enable him to
development or has a severe and prolonged read print*
mobility impairment if incurred for moving to • Synthetic speech systems Braille printers and
a dwelling more accessible by the patient or in large print on screen devices that enable blind
which the patient is more mobile and persons to utilize a computer
functional. • Monitors which can be attached to babies
• Any device designed to assist a person to enter identified as being prone to sudden infant
or leave a bathtub or shower to get on or off death syndrome and which sound an alarm
the toilet* when the baby stops breathing*
• A hospital bed including any prescribed • Electronic or computerized environmental
attachments* control systems designed exclusively for the
• A device designed to assist and individual in use of an individual with severe and prolonged
walking where the individual has a mobility mobility restrictions (apparently this is to
impairment* include electronic control systems for
• Devices designed exclusively to enable an quadriplegics)*
individual with a mobility impairment to • Extremity pumps or elastic support hose
operate a vehicle* designed exclusively to reduce swelling cause
• The lesser of $5,000 and 20% of the cost of a of lymph edema*
van (minus an portion of the cost for which • Inductive coupling osteogenesis stimulator for
credit is claimed under the rule above) that, at treating non-union of fractures or aiding in
the time of acquisition or within six months bone fusion
thereafter, has been adapted for the
transportation of the patient, who must require
the use of a wheelchair.
• An external breast prosthesis that is required
because of a mastectomy*
Page 9
MEDICAL TREATMENTS - IF PRESCRIBED
• Transplants: for 1988 and later years on behalf
• Blood Transfusion of a patient who required a bone marrow or
• Cosmetic Surgery organ transplant, the reasonable costs of
• Diathermy locating a compatible donor and arranging for
• Electric shock treatments the transplant, including legal fees and
• Healing services insurance premiums; and reasonable
• Hydrotherapy travelling, board and lodging expenses for the
• Injections donor and a companion as well as the recipient
• Insulin treatments and a companion incurred in respect of the
transplant.
• Nursing (by registered nurse)
• Ultra-violet ray treatments
• Pre-natal; post-natal treatments
• Weight loss or smoking cessation programs
• Psychotherapy
• Whirlpool baths
• Radium therapy
• X-ray treatments
• Speech pathology or audiology
MISCELLANEOUS
• Ambulance charges - to or from hospital • The cost of an animal specially trained to
• Transportation costs - to or from hospital, assist a person who is blind, deaf, or severely
clinic or doctor’s office to obtain services not impaired in the use of arms or legs. In addition
otherwise available, subject to minimum to the cost of the animal, its care and
distance requriements. Includes reasonable maintenance (including food and veterinary
transportation, meals, and accommodation for care) are eligible expenses, as are travel
one other person, if a doctor certifies that the expenses to a training facility to learn how to
patient is not capable of traveling alone. In handle the animal, and, if fulltime attendance
order to qualify it must be paid under the at the training facility is required, reasonable
following circumstances: board and lodging incurred in the fulltime
a) Equivalent medical services are attendance. Note that prior to 1990 this
unavailable within the patient’s locality. provision was limited to expense for guide
b) The patient takes a reasonably direct travel dogs for the blind and deaf.
route. • Hydraulic wheelchair lifts for a vehicle that
c) It is reasonable, in the circumstances, for has been prescribed by a qualified medical
the patient to travel to that place for the practitioner
medical services. • Reasonable expenses (other than amount paid
• Canadian Red Cross - Home Maker Service to your spouse or to a person under 18) to train
• Deductible & coinsurance amounts under your you or a person related to you if the training
company/private medical/dental plans relates to the physical or mental infirmity of a
• Prescription birth control pills person who is related to you is either (i) a
• Victorian Order of Nurses - home care member of your household or (ii) dependent
• Premium paid to a non-government medical or on you for support. “Infirmity” as used here is
hospital care plan infirmity and not impairment.
• Reasonable expenses relating to rehabilitative
therapy, including training in lip reading and
sign language, if incurred to adjust for the
patient’s loss of hearing or speech
Page 10
WHAT YOU CANNOT CLAIM AS MEDICAL EXPENSES
• Air Cleaners • Payments to a municipality where the
• Air Conditioners municipality employed a doctor to provide
• Air Filters medical services to the residents of the
• Annual Physician Fee municipality
• Athletic club expenses to keep physically fit • Prepayment to orthodontist for full
• Bathing Suit orthodontists services not yet incurred
• Birth control devices, non-prescription • Premium payments for life, disability and auto
• Blood Storage Expenses insurance (excluding health & dental
• Dehumidifiers insurance)
• Electric Toothbrush • Retainer Fees
• Funeral, cremation or burials, cemetery plot, • Scales for weighing food
monument, mausoleum • Services performed by an aesthetician
• Health programs offered by resort hotels, • Services performed by a nutritionist
health clubs and gyms • Sperm Bank
• Humidifiers • Teeth Whitening Products
• Illegal operations, treatments of drugs illegally • Thermometer
procured • Toothpaste
• Maternity Clothes • Wigs - unless made to order for individuals
• Mattress who have suffered abnormal hair loss to
• Medical Alert Bracelet disease, medical treatment, or accident
• Medical expenses for which you are
reimbursed or are entitled to be reimbursed
Note: Eligible expenses are defined by Canada Revenue Agency and are subject to change
without notice.
For a current and complete list, see CRA website at:
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/tp/it519r2-consolid/it519r2-consolid-e.pd
Page 11
Flexible Spending Account
Eligible Expense Guidelines and Exclusions
(Wellness and fitness coverage is employee only; date of receipt)
Wellness
Health Supplements
Alternative Healing Treatments and Therapies
Weight Management Programs - Registration only - Food not covered
Professional Health Assessment
Stress Management Program
Smoking Cessation Program
Fitness
Fitness facility fees (excluding golf membership)
Certified Personal Fitness Trainer
Fitness/exercise Video, DVD, Books
Instructed classes
Registration fees for Athletic Fitness events
Sports equipment excluding golf
Sports instruction fees, lessons, classes or courses
Self-defense classes and equipment
Fitness Equipment
Athletic footwear
Family Care
Daycare (regulated and approved)
Elder Care
Respite Care
(first day of course or professional registration, not date of receipt)\
Professional Development
Courses/classes
Seminars
Conference
Books (course related)
Tuition
Fees for designations/registrations/associations
Professional Journals and Subscriptions
Travel expenses associated with course attendance
Software related to professional development
Page 12
RRSP
One lump sump payment
Exclusions
Golf (only instruction is allowed)
Clothing
Wellness claims for dependents
Recreational activity
Clubs where physical activity is not the singular focus
Out of town travel for wellness/fitness
Classroom or correspondence by a non credited institution
Services provided by a family member
Nutrition replacements, food and supplements
Domestic services
Costs related to after school care activities
Computer hardware
Page 13
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