General
Gap in Medical Care— Military Treatment Facilities
Hi all. I’m wondering if anyone else (I know @authenticallyapril knows this well 😉) has tricare or goes on military bases for their follow-up transplant care.
My experience with the lab on base has been horrendous. I finally took April’s advice and have gone off base.
I moved to this Air Force base location in December 2020 and they have never faxed my labs (ordered from my transplant unit) over the last 2 YEARD to them. They’ve made me come in 3 days prior to lab draws to manually hand them the orders and they still don’t get the results to my transplant team.
I asked them and they said that they are “too busy” to fax results and they don’t have someone to do that—that a volunteer comes to the base once a month and “tries” to fax out all the results for the high risk transplant patients.
I’ve talked to my doctor on base and she just said, “yep, that doesn’t surprise me”. I talked to the patient advocate on base and she said that was terrible and then never followed up or did anything about it.
They forced my hand by having me go off base, and I think that’s what they’re trying to do—make their care so bad that I’m forced to go elsewhere.
So my question is, is this just me?? Or have other experienced this at military bases? They move us around so much it’s really hard to hold medical centers accountable and there are no methods of recourse.
What has your experience been?
