According to a report in Military.com, “Shifting military family members back into military hospitals and clinics for health care is a top priority ...” for the Defense Health Agency. For many years, military family members enrolled in TRICARE Prime have been referred to civilian health care providers if they cannot receive primary health care in a military treatment facility. That began to change in 2014 when the Army and Air Force began to move nearly 30,000 TRICARE Prime beneficiaries who had been receiving care from civilian providers near their bases/posts back into the military health care system. The Air Force will now be joining in that effort. Under the Army/Navy effort, TRICARE Prime beneficiaries were either involuntarily brought back into the military system, or were “invited” back in through an advertising campaign effort. Recognizing the fact that location close to a health care provider often made the civilian provider more attractive, DoD health care has set up six areas nationally where beneficiaries can see the military health care provider closest to them, regardless of whether the provider is from their service or not. The Defense Health Agency says it is working on the issues that are of concern to families and their ultimate goal is to have families want to receive their care from a military provider.

[Source:  TREA | Washington Update | August 22, 2016 ++]