MacDill 65 demonstration of military managed care--DoD. Notice of demonstration project.

This notice is to advise interested parties of a demonstration project in which DoD will enroll up to 2,000 Medicare-eligible military retirees at MacDill Air Force Base to primary care managers. The MacDill 65 demonstration project seeks to show that a DoD-operated program can provide primary health care services to beneficiaries eligible for both military health care and Medicare more effectively and efficiently than under the current DoD-operated system. In this project, DoD will grant enrollees in the program priority access to primary health care at MacDill in exchange for their agreement to receive all of their primary health care from MacDill AFB. Additional services, available at the military treatment facility at MacDill AFB, will be granted to these enrollees at a higher priority than that granted to other retirees and their family members not enrolled in TRICARE Prime. Funding for the demonstration for care provided will come from an additional $2 million per year over the current level of DoD expenditures on care provided to the MacDill AFB Medicare-eligible population. Claims for care provided to enrollees outside the MTF will be submitted to Medicare on a fee-for-service basis by the civilian provider. At the end of the project, DoD will conduct an analysis of the benefits and costs of the program. DoD will conduct the demonstration over three years, from October 1, 1998, to September 30, 2001. This demonstration project is being conducted under the authority of 10 USC 1092.