PSA for Beneficiaries of Tricare Prime/Prime Remote Seeing Civilian Doctors

Hey guys, I thought it would be important to mention this because what I am currently going through may impact some of you at some point.

I am an AD Army spouse and my husband is been in recruiting for the past 15 years, so we never live anywhere near a military installation. We are on Tricare Prime Remote, which is much like Prime but we only see civilian doctors. As all of you probably know, Prime requires referrals for EVERYTHING. I've never had an issue in any area we've PCS'd to until we moved this past summer. I am currently pregnant and seeing several specialists for pregnancy-related issues. I have required 3 referrals in the past week alone, but realized that the large hospital network that I am a patient of has absolutely no clue how to process Tricare referrals, which is weird because they accept Tricare. I had a doctor send up two referrals to specialists last week, but fail to send these referrals through Tricare's portal. I was told by Tricare that if I attended these appointments, I could be on the hook to pay out of pocket for them because no referral existed in their system though a referral existed in the hospital's system. These services are otherwise covered 100% with a proper referral.

Make sure your civilian PCP and doctors know how to process Tricare referrals. If you have Tricare East like I do, download the Humana Military app and check that referrals are processed in the app before going to your appointment or getting your procedures done. I learned from Tricare that this is an ongoing issue with several Healthcare institutions and it has caused Tricare to deny claims that would have otherwise been approved. Just a PSA. It's been hectic this past week calling doctors' offices to see if they could properly submit my referrals.