TRICARE: The Restructuring of Military Healthcare System in Response to

In the U.S and other nations of the world, the health expenditure and number of physicians increase as the economy expands. However, physician shortage is of a great concern globally, which the U.S and the Military Healthcare System (MHS) are no exceptions. According to Garber (2004) â€Å"a shortage exit when there is unsatisfied demand, which occurs when the quantity of a good or service is less than what people will be willing to buy at the current price†. For example a long wait time to get an elective surgery done, or a long wait for a patient to get an appointment to see the doctor are evidence of physician shortage. Another definition of shortage is â€Å"having a projected supply of physicians that meet less than 80% of the forecasted demand or need, calculated at the estimated means (Scheffler, Liu, Kinfu, & Dal Poz, 2007). The World Health Organization report (2006) estimated that, 57 countries had absolute shortage of 2.3 million physicians. This shortage acco rding to prior studies implied the lack of a sufficient number of health care professionals to deliver skilled health interventions such as child-birth. Schaffer et al. (2007) projected the global supply of the physician workforce to balance the demand using the demand base model and sufficient surplus in the year 2015. Despite this projection of surplus and balance of the physician workforce globally, the problem of shortage will still remain with some countries and nations as a result of distributional problems that continue to persist, and Africa for instance will need about 65% increases in supply of physicians by the year 2015 (Scheffler et al., 2007). According to Cooper (2004 & 2005) the shortage of physicians in the U.S was related to the economic capacit... ....S and overseas to supplement the care provided to the growing beneficiary population in the MTFs. The MTF is the primary health care facility for TRICARE. TRICARE PCP shortage is due to deployment to war zones, humanitarian missions and special combat skill training. Throughout the research, attempts will be made to respond to the primary question and then the other sub questions in relation to; TRICARE background history, epidemiology, physician types, administration, policies and law, finance, personnel, marketing, ethical issues, beneficiary complaints and satisfaction. Other areas include the role restructuring plays in resolving the beneficiary complaints and the impact the restructuring of TRICARE will have on health care delivery to beneficiaries. The summary, recommendations and conclusion will be addressed finally to complete this research paper.