A new study shows that military families in the US experience greater difficulties in accessing healthcare than civilian families. Researchers assessed data from 84,783 children under 18 from 2007 to 2015. Roughly two percent of children had insurance through TRICARE, the health program for service members and their families; 37 percent were covered by health programs like Medicaid; 51 percent had private health insurance; and 10 percent were uninsured.

The children covered by TRICARE were found to more easily access care than children with other types of benefits, though children with special needs or behavioral health problems had less access to care with TRICARE than with other types of insurance coverage.

“Optimum care of children with special healthcare needs hinges upon a well-integrated system and continuity of care,” said Dr. Muhammad Ali Chaudhary, a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. “Relocation, a common phenomenon in military families, is associated with disruption of care and the need for re-establishment of care in the new location. This may prevent these patients from getting the integrated healthcare experience that they need.”

TRICARE, one of the largest integrated healthcare systems in the US, with more than 9 million beneficiaries, has been shown to provide equal access to surgical, obstetrics and trauma and pediatric trauma patients, regardless of race. Over 1.7 million children across the country are eligible for TRICARE by having one parent in the military, including active duty and selected reserve members.

Although TRICARE delivers near-universal coverage through military treatment facilities and civilian care, military families still face challenges when it comes to treating children with chronic physical, mental or behavioral health issues. may indeed have an easier time getting care through TRICARE than with other insurance, some previous research has found.

Only one-third of parents with kids in TRICARE reported being able to contact their child’s usual provider at night, on weekends, or after hours. These statistics mirror those of uninsured kids or children with public health insurance, while half of the children with private health insurance reported being able to see or contact a provider after hours.

According to Karen Ruedisueli, government research deputy director at the National Military Family Association, the timing of the study is ideal. “For me, the most important thing is the timing of these results. We’ve been pounding the pavement, emphasizing that this military family population really does face some barriers to accessing care, and now we have some numbers to back that up, which is really helpful,” she said.

Currently, the Military Health System is reforming Tricare and restructuring the system to transfer oversight of military treatment facilities to the Defense Health Agency. It is expected that 18,000 military medical personnel will be cut.

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“The message we’ve been trying to drive home is that while certainly we want combat casualty care to be optimized, and understandably we need to control costs within the MHS, we can’t forget military family care and most specifically children’s care, which tends to fall through the cracks. Military kids’ health care needs and the barriers their families have historically faced in obtaining care for them have to be addressed as part of the MHS reform effort,” Ruedisueli said.