To anyone who I am sending this to, I beg you Please help us! Please forgive my vigor on this issue but I am so tired of repetitively having to fight this battle personally as well as watch so many other families like mine in our area do the same. Changes have got to be made about health care and Tricare Prime processes making an abrupt non-conciliatory change of primary care practitioners without patient care need evaluation being considered first This needs to STOP! We are a Retired navy family being forced to lose our doctor that has been treating my family for over 6 years. This doctor is an Internist which is crucial to my family in which one of us has diabetes, repetitive kidney stones and apnea issues amongst other things, another is anemic and has gastric issues that leads to malabsorption and low blood production issues and another with ADHD. We were informed by a letter in the mail that the Kings Bay medical clinic was expanding its staff and that our PCM was being switched without our consultation or consent to this site. My husband called the Tricare offices to inquire as to whether or not an Internist was part of the Staff change. He was informed that No, there was not an Internist on staff at this clinic that we would be able to see. My husband explained the health issues that three of us have that require our PCM to be an Internist and all the horrific issues we have had in the mistreatment of our family members at this facility in the past. Things were so bad that I had to personally approach the commanding officer and petition the NAS Jax command repeatedly in order to try and get first, the proper medical attention my son needed at the time and secondly, to get my family referred to doctors that could actually address my family’s health care needs. I ultimately had to drive over 50 miles to the military emergency facility in Jacksonville to acquire care for my son. The first response, of course, by the Tricare representative was that we could incur the financial hardship of changing our insurance to Tricare standard in which our out of pocket expenses in co-payments alone on all of our medications and monthly doctors’ visits would shatter our financial wellbeing. Then she stated that they had to do this to save money due to all the VA issues and that a family like ours costs was the reason the local Tricare offices had to be closed. She then continued on to tell my husband that this is the local administrations way to recoup money they needed due to all the recent cuts implemented by the current federal administration. So what does that mean? Does it mean that once again, the actual health care needs of a veteran of 21.5 years and his family do not matter or are not as important as the dollars that the government needs to recoup due to their mismanagement? Like the VA, even active duty families are faced with waiting lists or scheduling errors and delays so that their actual need in medical care is not met at the PCM level. Many times they are forced to travel distances to Military base emergency rooms or incur higher expenses at a local civilian one followed by not having a timely follow-up appointment that would be needed and the cycle begins again. My personal experience in this begins when my 5 year old son had broken his finger and was told by the Emergency room doctor to follow up with our PCM within 48 hours as he would need an orthopedic referral. I called the clinic at Kings Bay which was our PCM at the time and they could not make an appointment for him for a month. This was a broken bone in a 5 year old boy and they literally would not give me an appointment. This is what prompted me to go to the command. I ultimately had to drive him over 50 miles to the Naval Hospital in Jacksonville to get him the care he needed. Other bad experiences with this facility were with my two children who had asthma in which over a dozen times I needed to be seen by the clinic as my PCM and was unable to get them seen. This then would force the more expensive and extensive hours of waiting at the emergency room to occur. Being anemic, I tried to schedule my doctor’s appointment and schedule blood work to be drawn as I often have needed to have blood transfusions. Several times they either lost my blood work report, or they didn’t put me in for the time needed to be checked by the doctor fully or with the right doctor and the nurse practitioner I was scheduled with was not capable of treating me. So then I would have to reschedule most often at least a week later to come back. My levels would have then been so low that now oral intervention would not be an option so a hospital stay and blood transfusion were my only recourse. I do not know if this staff expansion at the Kings Bay Medical clinic has improved the services needed for our Active duty and Tricare Prime families in the area or not. But for my family, it really is not our main issue. The fact of the matter is that my family needs to have an Internist as a physician and there is not one on staff at this facility. Yet, they have notified us that they have denied our request to stay with our current Internist and are forcing us to go to a medical facility that is not staffed with the medical personnel that will meet the health care needs that we have. We are being forced to return to a medical facility that frankly scares the crap out of me due to our horrific past treatment and experiences we have already suffered through. To add insult to injury, they will not verbally give us the specifics of our denial stating a letter of explanation is coming in the mail which will arrive in 7 to 10 business days; however, our change in PCM is effective in 2 days. I can submit an appeal in writing via the mail to Tricare, but they have 30 days to respond and again, we will be under a facility without an Internist to provide us our health care. We are a hardworking, tax paying, Gulf War veteran’s family that is financially stretched and every penny counts. We simply cannot afford Tricare Standard as a health care policy. So what do we do when they are refusing to allow us to be treated under our current policy by the Internist that we require for health care? Why is it once again that it is a military family at the mercy of a government system of whom have already sacrificed so much that is being mistreated in the two most fragile aspects of our life, our health care and our finances? Why is it that it is our Military holistically which is always the first tool of use to fix matters that are not of our doing and it is always at a great cost to the military members whole familys wellbeing? Does anyone of you have an answer as to just how I can overcome this so I can take care of my family the way our needs require? What are we supposed to do here? Right now my only choice is inadequate health care or financial destruction. Please will someone tell me that there is some other way for my family?
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:15:39 +0000
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