Unmet Health Care Needs Among Children with Special Health Care Needs Enrolled in Tricare
Authors: Zickafoose J. 
Published: August 2020

TRICARE provides health care benefits to nearly two million children of active duty, retired, National Guard, and reserve service members. Child health advocates and congressional reports have raised questions regarding the adequacy access to care for children with military health benefits, particularly children with special health care needs (CSHCN). The objective of this study was to compare the health care experiences of CSHCN in TRICARE with those of CSHCN with other sources of health insurance.

A cross‐sectional analysis comparing unmet health care needs among CSHCN with TRICARE versus CSHCN with other sources of health insurance using nationally representative data from three years of the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH), 2016‐2018. The NSCH includes a broad range of questions related to child health and health care to provide national level estimates, and the data allow for comparisons between insurance coverage groups and TRICARE. The survey data contain responses from over 100,000 parents or primary caregivers (parents) of children, representative of over 73 million children annually. This includes 804 children who were representative of approximately 367,000 CSHCN covered by TRICARE annually.

Children with special health care needs.

Overall, 21 percent (95% CI 19‐24 percent) of parents of children covered by TRICARE reported their child had a special health care need, compared to 16 percent of children with commercial insurance (95% CI 15‐16 percent) and 24 percent of children with public insurance (95% CI 23‐25 percent). Eight percent of parents of CSHCN covered by TRICARE (95% CI 4‐16 percent) reported any unmet health care needs in the prior 12 months, compared to 4 percent of CSHCN with private insurance (95% CI 4‐5 percent) and 9 percent of CSHCN with public insurance (95% CI 8‐11 percent). Among specific needs, 3 percent or fewer CSHCN covered by TRICARE had unmet needs for medical, dental, vision, hearing, or mental health care. Similarly, 5 percent or fewer reported difficulty or delays in getting services because of eligibility for coverage of the service, availability in the area, difficulty in getting an appointment, or cost.

About 11 percent of parents of CSHCN covered by TRICARE reported usually or always being frustrated in getting needed services for their child during the prior 12 months, compared to 4 percent of those with private insurance and 9 percent of those with public insurance. About 12 percent of parents of CSHCN covered by TRICARE reported problems with paying for their child’s health care needs in the prior 12 months, compared to 23 percent of those with private insurance and 8 percent of those with public insurance.

TRICARE is largely meeting the needs of the CSHCN for whom it provides benefits, but there are opportunities for improvement. CSHCN in TRICARE face higher rates of unmet needs than privately insured children, and their parents face higher levels of frustration in getting needed services.

TRICARE should continue to work with families of CSHCN to identify specific unmet needs and sources of frustration with getting needed services.