Urgent Care Utilization

The purpose of this issue brief is to assess how urgent care utilization of non-active duty Prime beneficiaries, who were eligible for the pilot program, compares to other TRICARE and non-TRICARE beneficiaries’ urgent care utilization. The assessment is based on data from the Health Care Survey of Department of Defense Beneficiaries (HCSDB). We focused on four groups of beneficiaries: active duty (AD) service members, non-AD Prime enrollees, beneficiaries in other TRICARE plans, and beneficiaries in non-TRICARE plans. To ensure that we had enough survey respondents in each of the four groups, we combined data from the first quarters of fiscal years 2017 and 2018. We analyzed the distributions for how often beneficiaries needed care right away and where they go for care, including urgent care centers, the ER, and the doctor’s office. We assessed the wait time for the four groups to determine how often the 24-hour standard is being met. In addition, we examined the beneficiaries’ reasons for choosing urgent care centers and whether they used a nurse’s line.