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Tricare offers active-duty respite care

Tricare will pay for respite care for up to eight hours a day, five days a week for homebound patients who are active-duty service members.

The benefit was authorized in the 2008 Defense Authorization Act, and Tricare officials now have the mechanism in place to implement it.

There are no cost shares or co-pays.

“What this benefit does is provide caregivers the opportunity to rest,” Army Maj. Gen. Elder Granger, deputy director of Tricare Management Activity said in a statement announcing the benefit. “We know that homebound patients have special needs that take a real toll on the caregiver. And if a caregiver is overworked, the wounded, ill or injured service member may suffer physically or mentally.”

The benefit applies to active-duty service members whose conditions or injuries make them unable to leave home without great effort, and who need frequent help from their primary caregiver. “Frequent” means the service member needs more than two interventions during the eight-hour period when the caregiver normally would be sleeping.

The benefit is retroactive. Service members or their legal representatives can submit receipts for reimbursement of respite care services that were provided after Jan. 1, 2008 by a Tricare-authorized Home Health Agency.