How To Run A Real HSA

The payment system has to apply any network discounts or other discounts correctly.

Otherwise, if the HSA banking system fails to communicate properly with the claims adjustication system, employees will fall into the trap of overpaying at the doctor’s office. Once employees overpay, they will have to request reimbursements from the doctors. The employees then will have to figure out how to get the extra funds back into their pre-tax HSA accounts or face potential tax penalties.

3 Protect Against Early Expenses

Some employees will have big expenses early in the year, before contributions have accumulated in their HSAs.

One solution may be to create a credit line for these employeesan overdraft protection program. Of course, the last thing most benefits managers want to do is get into the loan business.

An independent HSA administrator could help by providing this credit line. Then, over the course of the next few months, the debt would be paid off with contributions into the HSA account.

Dr. Steve Neeleman is a practicing trauma surgeon and chief executive officer of HealthEquity Inc., Tucson, Ariz., a national HSA administrator. He can be reached at [email protected].

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, October 14, 2004. Copyright 2004 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.