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SLU Open Enrollment is November 6-21

The 2026 Benefits Open Enrollment period is an opportunity to review and make changes to benefits to ensure they are aligned with employees' needs for the year ahead. The 2026 Benefit Guide can be found on the HR SharePoint site.

Saint Louis University regularly benchmarks its benefits against peer institutions and market data to ensure its programs remain competitive, sustainable and supportive of faculty and staff. While the analysis confirms that the University’s benefits continue to compare favorably in both quality and value, SLU also recognizes that any increase in contributions is difficult in the current environment.  SLU has taken deliberate steps to limit these increases as much as possible while maintaining access to high-quality coverage and care. 

Key Dates

Medical Plan Changes

Medical and prescription drug plan costs continue to rise at rates faster than inflation. Plan costs across the country are projected to increase in excess of 10% going into next year. Saint Louis University’s plan is experiencing trends at this level as well. In response, the University will increase its share of healthcare plan cost from the traditional commitment of 75% to 76.9% in 2026. Even with this increased cost share absorbed by the University, changes to the medical plan design and employee contribution rates are necessary.

Regarding the medical plan design, tier 1 coverage, care provided by SLUCare and SSM Health providers, remains unchanged. Faculty and staff will see increases to deductibles, co-pays and out-of-pocket maximums in tier 2 of both the UHC Plus and UHC QHDHP plans. 

Contribution Increases for 2026

While the University’s plan costs are increasing by more than 10% in 2026, employee healthcare contribution increases will be held to 6% in 2026. 

Wellness Initiative Discount

SLU will continue its wellness initiative discount that allows employees the opportunity to lower their monthly contributions by completing the wellness initiative requirement. The wellness initiative discount will remain at $70 per adult and $35 for a medically covered spouse in 2026. 

Care.com to be Sunset

In order to reduce staff and faculty healthcare plan cost increases the decision has been made to end the University’s care.com benefit. The benefits provided by our Care.com partnership were particularly important and valuable to our community during the pandemic. However, since that time the participation has declined significantly. Accordingly, it was determined that SLU's overall community would be better served by redirecting the financial resources going toward the care.com benefit to the healthcare plan to reduce contribution increases to a lower level. This benefit will officially end on December 31, 2025.

Dental Plan Changes

Participants in our dental plan will see slight increases to contributions for 2026 as well as a couple of plan enhancements. The plan enhancements consist of:

Open Enrollment in Workday

The open enrollment process will be completed in Workday. Alex, your virtual benefits assistant, will also be available again this year to walk employees through their choices in an interactive way.

View Open Enrollment Information