The Group Activity Report (GAR) is essential to ensuring accurate plan coverage for your clients—and now, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island (BCBSRI) has made it even easier for employers to submit this important enrollment information.
The GAR is used to add new dependents to an existing policy, cancel coverage, change plan benefit elections, or transfer subscribers from one group to another within an account. To improve the user experience, we are introducing a new, web-based version that employers can complete and submit quickly and easily.
We have also expanded certain form fields within the GAR and streamlined others, including:
- Added new drop-down fields and expanded options for member suffixes, qualifying events, and more
- Embedded qualifying event and change types into the appropriate request fields
- Enabled attachments so that the GAR and supporting documentation can be submitted together electronically
- Added a “submit now” button that eliminates certain data fields and ensures your client’s requests reach the Enrollment Intake team quickly
In addition to our new online GAR, we’ve also streamlined our existing paper form to complement these enhancements. Your clients may complete the GAR online or download a PDF copy and fill it out manually. [Note: There have been instances where clients have attempted to complete or send the GAR from within their browser. Please ensure your clients understand they must save the form to their desktop or download it before completing.]
BCBSRI will begin to “sunset” the older, PDF GAR as of August 1, 2021. However, we will work with clients to transition to the new form and will not reject the prior GAR as long as all required information is included.
You can access the new online GAR form here.
If you have questions, please contact your BCBSRI account representative or call 1-800-637-3718 extension 6064.