Health Services
Post Office Box 8043
Statesboro, Georgia 30460-8043
Telephone: (912) 478-5641
Fax: (912) 478-1893
http://services.georgiasouthern.edu/health

Dear Graduate Students,

I’d like to remind you of the following useful information for Graduate Students.

Graduate Students are required to participate in the University System of Georgia's mandatory student health insurance plan (USG SHIP). You can find a link to Pearce & Pearce, for the plan information, on Health Services website. Also, you'll need to "RE-ENROLL" in the plan each semester on the Pearce & Pearce website while you are in graduate school, as you pay your tuition and health insurance premium at the Bursar's Office.

Graduate Students should log onto Health Services at http://services.georgiasouthern.edu/health/ and click on the link to our web-based secure communication tool called MedBuddy-U (look for the icon with the smiling stethoscope!) and enroll in MedBuddy-U, complete the medical background information, and provide current health insurance information for us. You can also access the Georgia Southern certificate of immunization form via MedBuddy-U; graduate students who are new students to Georgia Southern are required to comply with the Board of Regent's immunization policy. We're asking all students to enroll in MedBuddy-U, whether or not they've actually been to our clinic yet or not. That will help to expedite the process when they do come to the University Health Services for medical care, and will help the students to take full advantage of all University Health Services has to offer to our students. You can discover additional information about the benefits of MedBuddy-U on our website.

We're very excited about the ability we will soon have to provide insurance billing and collection services for our students. As of January 2007, Health Services began partnering with Highland Campus Health Group to conduct third party insurance billing and collection for professional clinical services students receive at our facility. We are now in the implementation phase for this project and our present timeline calls for us to have everything in place to begin the insurance billing and collection by mid-to-late-summer. This will help alleviate some of the financial pressures faced by university students by eliminating some of their out-of-pocket expenses for reimbursable professional clinical services and ancillary services (such as laboratory tests and X-rays, prescriptions, referrals to other specialists) which are already covered by their health insurance plans. In addition, it will also allow Health Services provider prescriptions and off-campus medical referrals to be recognized by student/parent health insurance plans. Another benefit of this partnership with Highland Campus Health Group will be Health Services ability to limit increases in the student health fee, which is used to help support the administrative costs of managing an ambulatory student health center facility, and passing those savings along to our students. We do not plan to "balance bill" the students or parents for the portion of the insurance claims not paid by the insurance, another plus for our students.

Please call on us if we can be of further assistance to you.

Respectfully,

Paul Ferguson
Director of Health Services