Defense Health Care: DOD Lacks Assurance That Selected Reserve Members Are Informed about TRICARE Reserve Select

DOD does not have reasonable assurance that Selected Reserve members are informed about TRS. A 2007 policy designated the reserve components as having responsibility for providing information about TRS to Selected Reserve members on an annual basis however, officials from three of the seven components told GAO that they were unaware of this policy. Additionally, only one of the reserve components had a designated official at the headquarters level acting as a central point of contact for TRICARE education, including TRS. Without centralized responsibility for TRS education, the reserve components cannot ensure that all eligible Selected Reserve members are receiving information about the TRS program. Compounding this, the managed care support contractors that manage civilian health care are limited in their ability to educate all reserve component units in their regions as required by their contracts because they do not have access to comprehensive information about these units, and some units choose not to use the contractors to help educate their members about TRS. Nonetheless, DOD officials stated that they were satisfied with the contractors efforts to educate units upon request and to conduct outreach. Lastly, it is difficult to determine whether Selected Reserve members are knowledgeable about TRS because the results of two DOD surveys that gauged members awareness of the program may not be representative because of low response rates.