TRICARE
2009-05-07

An independent survey ranked TRICARE as number one among 22 of the largest healthcare and health insurance plans in 2008. Army Maj. Gen. Elder Granger, deputy director of TRICARE Management Activity (TMA), recently accepted the recognition on behalf of TMA.

“It is very gratifying to see beneficiaries rank their healthcare plan so highly in an independent survey,” said Granger.

TMA administers the TRICARE health care plan for the uniformed services, retirees and their families, serving more than 9.4 million eligible beneficiaries worldwide.

The Wilson Rx Survey, conducted annually by Wilson Health Information, LLC, reported that TRICARE beneficiaries scored TRICARE high enough to rank it number one in satisfaction in nearly 40 categories including overall health plan satisfaction, plan coverage, costs, service delivery, quality and prescription drug coverage.

According to Jim Wilson, president of Wilson Health Information, the survey was self-administered with respondents rating various aspects of their health care and prescription plans on a scale of one to four. Conducted by U.S. mail, more than 71,000 surveys were sent to household healthcare shoppers or decision makers. Of the 34,454 people completing the survey, 835 were TRICARE beneficiaries.

“We looked at the data and found it to be similar to our own results for the same demographics,” said Granger.

TRICARE Officials note that external surveys differ from Department of Defense and TRICARE-conducted surveys. Survey methods, questions, scales of measurements and weighting of responses may not be comparable.

In addition, demographics may not reflect the entire TRICARE beneficiary population. For instance, the Wilson Rx survey did not include overseas, Alaska and Hawaii and some other locations with high TRICARE beneficiary populations.

Details on the Wilson Rx survey can be found at the TRICARE transparency Web page at http://www.tricare.mil/Transparency.

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