Tricare West

Overview

Tricare regional contractor (West region). Government payer serving military / dependents. Currently administered via Humana in several states, with BCBS involvement in some (e.g. Oklahoma); routing and process shift frequently.

Pain Points / Open Issues

  • Rules change roughly every 6 weeks. Payer guidance on routing, submission channels, and who to contact flip-flops on a ~6-week cadence per Confluent ops. Makes SOPs stale almost as soon as they’re written.
  • Direct-contact-dependent. Confluent has one productive direct contact today; the value depends on that contact staying in the role.
  • Tricare team at BCBS still being stood up. A BCBS Texas rep told Medallion that the Tricare sub-department was still being built internally and experiencing significant delays (context: discussing BCBS-routed Tricare enrollments).
  • Routing most recently flipped in Oklahoma (per Julie / Confluent 4/15); Humana now primary routing path, but change came ~6 weeks after the last one.

Decisions & Commitments

  • 2026-04-15Confluent explicitly not holding Medallion to SLA on Tricare West given payer instability. Source: Melody in 15 weekly.
  • 2026-04-15 — SOP update committed for Tricare West (alongside Healthspring) by 2026-04-20, followed by team retrain.

Key Facts

  • Rule/routing churn cadence: ~6 weeks.
  • Top-10 volume on Confluent account (recently dropped from #1 to #2 position, week of 2026-04-15).
  • Cross-payer dependency: BCBS state plans route some Tricare enrollments through their own Tricare sub-teams (e.g. Oklahoma) — process consistency low.

Source History