Pvt Charles J Shutt Detachment VAVS

Although defense health care does not fall within the purview of Tommy Thomas, deputy undersecretary of defense for military community and family policy, military families do. So Thomas is looking into military families’ complaints about access to health care.

He plans to travel to Fort Drum, N.Y., and Fort Campbell, Ky., with representatives from the Tricare Management Activity to hear firsthand about that particular issue, said Arthur Myers, principal director of the military community and family policy office, in testimony Wednesday before the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee.

Myers noted that spouses testified in a Senate hearing earlier this year that they rated their health care as excellent, but access as poor.

“And what we’ve found out [is that] a lot of health professionals will not accept Tricare. So constantly we hear at Fort Campbell, these families have to travel to Nashville, an hour and a half, to get the care,” Myers said.

Rep. John Fleming, R-La., said that when he recently visited Fort Polk, La., a young woman who was 14 weeks pregnant said she had not yet been able to get an appointment with an obstetrician. “That’s atrocious,” Fleming said.

Families have complained about access to Tricare to some of the services’ senior enlisted advisors, who also testified at the hearing. “Soldiers and family members routinely list access to quality medical care as their biggest concern,” said Sergeant Major of the Army Kenneth Preston.

“One of the major accessibility challenges to getting quality medical care is finding sufficient health care providers outside our military installations who accept Tricare payment,” said Preston, who testified earlier this year about problems with access.

Access to medical care and counseling for children in schools to help them with deployments were two issues on Preston’s list of priorities when lawmakers asked what could be could do to help families.

Access is also Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlton Kent’s primary issue for Marine Corps families. “We have a shortage of doctors right now, so it might take a family member weeks to get in just for a minor thing,” Kent said.

Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Rick West said he would prefer to do some research on the question of what lawmakers could do help Navy families. “As far as everything that’s in place, I would have to take that back overall to take a look at it,” he said.

West said the Navy has done a lot to improve family programs, but he has stressed to leadership that they need to improve efforts to educate families about existing programs that they may not be using.

“I’ve been stressing to every level of Navy leadership that we can’t expect our Navy families to find out about these programs on their own,” he said.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force James Roy said his service is working to improve its special needs program, and “we need to continue to work on that,” he said.

Air Force Col. Cory Lyman, assistant director of individual and family support policy in the Pentagon’s Office of Reserve Affairs, asked for continued funding support for the new Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program, which helps reserve component members and their families throughout the deployment cycle.

In recent years, some funding for family programs has come from the supplemental wartime budget rather than the regular defense budget, a practice that Myers said must change.

“When I talk to the families, their one fear is, if the war winds down, these programs are going to stop,” he said. “I think that would be a great disservice to all of our people.”

-------- By Karen Jowers, www.navytimes.com